My approach to painting strides between the representational, illusionistic possibilities of painting and immersion in its material quality. I am interested in how images can stage a two-fold relationship between real and imaginary worlds. I examine painting’s capacity for the mercurial, focusing on the shifts between observational and imaginary in the construction of an image. Images created in the work take inspiration from online sources, as well as my own personal photographs. Conceptually the work draws on ideas of Romanticism, the power of imagination, individualism, transcendence. Through paintings and props I stage a fragmented narrative with settings and figures representing the performer, the adventurer, the mystic, the artist at work.Alongside the paintings I develop a narrative framework of the events and characters that emerge. As work develops it is often very surprising to me. The voice or voices in the text are a link to connect the pieces together as a whole.
