Insight

In his work, figures emerge from abstraction by exploring the emotional states that underpin memory, empathy, and identity.  His extensive use of markmaking tools, gestural lines, and spatial ambiguity seeks to depict our internal synaptic processes.  By blending traditional real-world paintings and drawings with overlaid digital compositions, his work considers the manifestation of people, places, and moments triggered by external influences and everyday objects.

He is fascinated by how our memories are so integral to our sense of self; stored memories of loved ones, experiences with former partners, and significant past moments ↳ remaining largely persistent ↳ are all due to this densely packed, interconnected organic matter hidden away in our skulls.  He explores the transient, transformative, and entropic states that shape recollection and emotional capacity, encouraging viewers to reflect on how this impacts their self-perception.

Material

Initial drawings ↳ investigative sketches and canvas compositions ↳ favour Conté and charcoal pastel. These mediums are chosen for their shared mark-making qualities with paint.  As a piece develops, he blends various processes and painting tools, including spray paint, markers, rollers, brushes, and oil paint. This interplay traces the journey of recollection from formation to entropy. The medium serves both narrative and inquiry; dispersing moments, shifting memories, and eroding recall.

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As someone that’s made a career from working visually, my interest in neuroscience revealed that I have Aphantasia; I have zero mind-eye.  I have a sense of remembered things, and within that a feel for movement, space, and the passage of time, I just can’t evoke mental imagery.  I imagine this is why objects, totems of memory, take on significance for me - like a replicant (*Blade Runner*) holding onto 'precious photos'.  But I don’t see this as a hindrance when it comes to painting, especially with memory as my core subject, but an opportunity for exploration; I lean into the emotion, trying for the qualia, looking for the chemical/electrical process of recollection. Memories anchor our sense of self, define our values, when they entropy the “I” can fall away, but for the large part - even with all our physiological transformation over time - they are persistent (if a little open to reinterpretation); ultimately defining who we are.

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