About Me
I am a london based abstract-figurative painter working in oil paint to explore Queer themes and the tragicomic realities of human existence. I believe my work's inherently subversive nature exists in striking contrast to the conventional medium and techniques typically associated with oil paint, and is emphasised by my own interest in the LGBTQ community and its relevant issues. However, I prefer to shy from any outwardly political Queer statement, situating my perspective as autobiographical, imagined, and subjective, and allowing the viewer to draw their own respective readings as presented by my work.
My paintings tend to be narrative-based, informed by my own memories and lived experiences. These ideas are thereafter amplified and exaggerated to create an unsettling, almost dream-like painterly mise-en-scène. I tend to use found imagery or vintage photographs of male sporting teams as a starting point, thereafter combined with other imagery to create a hallucinatory, slighty off-putting image that I then re-approach and further exaggerate through my painterly process. Through this process I am often able to subvert the original purpose of the image (the celebration of masculine physical achievement) and accentuate the homoerotic undertones, slightly mocking heteronormative masculinity and thereby 'queering' the perception of the image through my art.
I prefer to utilise a boldly contrasting palette, dark rich colours, and acid-like fluorescents; embracing notions of crudeness or what might be conventionally deemed 'bad taste' as beneficial to the intentions of my work. I believe that the camp-sensibility inherent in my subject matter tends to complement the theatricality and subtly kitsch nature of my source material, allowing for a somewhat perverse view of normalcy, questioning the 'rightness' of the gender-tropes.
My goal is to highlight the performative nature of life, the darkly comic realities of Queer existence, and even to draw awareness to ideas of masquerade and (non)conformity as a reality of how we cope, distract, and react to the human condition and our own fragile sense of self.