My current body of work responds to ideas of lost Modern optimism, generating imagined landscapes wherein tensions between contemporary acceleration contrasts painted studies as a form of deceleration. Recurrent subjects of novelty handmade objects such as paper planes and fortune tellers illustrate the human-made built with humour and tactile attention. Illusionary qualities of painted paper then appear as subjects of discard and detachment suggesting a contemporary divorce from this material care as well as an intent to glean such leftovers through image-making. I employ diagram style compositions, lending a sense of modern rationale and organisation to painted materiality, allowing an exchange between logical symbols and material sensitivity in oil paint. My use of perspective and architectural features extends the attention of these studies to a spatial logic, forming a relation between care and the built urban environment. This investigation is driven by an exploration of 20th century optimism in Modern architecture, a period wherein material forms in the urban were closely related to ideals of social betterment. Paper objects relay an idea of recreated flatness, illustrating a shift from impenetrability to optimistic object by way of a hands-on-ness. Such inherent qualities of canvas and paper as impassable flatness parallels hostile architecture, an obstructive urban trend divorced from modern optimism. Through this relation, apparitions of spaces and horizon lines act as optimistic maneuvers seeking to recreate flatness to open space, contrast contemporary proliferation of genericity and obstruction in urbanity, and allow the horizon line to be maintained as a symbol of futurity.
