I am an oil painter motivated by themes of popular culture, obsession and art history. My recent body of work explores this bizarre mixture of ideas to create dizzying secondary worlds that explore the spaces that images live in, and to question how these images function amidst chaos. My process starts with research and ends with a painting, with lots of jumping back and forth between steps. I spend a lot of time in the studio researching, and even more time outside of the studio researching. I spend time with different characters and movements in art history, specifically Pauline Boty and Paul Gauguin. Although opposite ends of the scale, both artists have been vital to my process. I am fascinated with Boty and her ability to incorporate fan culture into painting with such ease. In contrast, I am fascinated with Gauguin and his controversial position in art history. I consider him a beautiful painter, yet a horrible man. I wrestle with this idea often in the studio, with the understanding that he has a fascinating authority over colour and composition, yet his behaviour taints this view. The root of my practice is the simple idea of being a painter in the studio. To work with colour, stencils and text. To make bad paintings, ugly paintings and honest paintings. To make a prep study, love it, then paint it and hate it. To start over, and over, and over again. To obsess over everything, all of the time.
