As an artist, I have always been fascinated with the figurative. In recent years, this has turned from a focus on the body towards an exploration of the faceless. This interest grew from the pandemic and from having to change jobs during the initial COVID outbreak in China. I began in a new school where I taught 750 different students every week. Each student and staff member wore a compulsory face mask which made them impossible to get to know. It was overwhelming to see so many faces in one place with most of their faces covered.
This work is about the unknown, the unrecognisable. Beginning with masked portraits I initially explored the newfound necessity of looking more closely at the finer details of someone's presence when we can no longer rely on our ability to read their expressions. Now I find myself studying the figure within environments. How does an unexpected person’s presence affect our environment? Does that change when we can’t see their faces? Working intuitively with personal photography, AI generated imagery, collage, and the more traditional medium of oil paint, this series in progress seeks to explore the connection between familiarity (or lack thereof) and the uncanny.
