MA SHOWS

The small, monotonous tasks and routines in daily life have directly inspired my practice over the last year. During lockdown, many of us were in a position where we needed to look to the smaller moments in life to find appreciation and gratitude, thus these mundanities were given a new sense of importance and purpose.

My work seeks to highlight the dream-like and ethereal elements to the everyday, and present these activities as other worldly, placing a significance on the elements of life which are often overlooked. By using strange, unlikely, and sometimes romantic imagery, the mundane is propelled into an alternate and whimsical reality.

Albert Camus’ philosophy of absurdism has been a key research point within my practice. Camus argues that there is no reason for existence, that life and society is meaningless, and the way that we live life feels strange, chaotic, and absurd. As much as we try to have order and rationality, life itself is chaotic by nature. Recently I have been using this chaos and absurdity to demonstrate a blurring between the ordinary and the extraordinary, allowing the two to coexist and demonstrate how existence exhibits aspects of both in the everyday. Consequently, I have begun to explore components of surrealism and magical realism, with a focus on depicting illogical subject matter that holds little relation to one another.

My painting techniques imply a dreamy and atmospheric dynamic to the work, using soft marks to inflict a sense of haziness to the scene. Additionally, there is influence from baroque artwork with regards to implementing theatrics and drama, which further implies bizarre themes and spectacular narratives.

My practice works to make sense of the world by using the nonsensical, encouraging the viewer to engage with different ways of thinking, and altering perspectives of what we thought we knew.