I’m an artist struggling to make sense of an essentially nonsensical world. In my recent paintings, this is reflected by juxtaposed strangely positioned figures, and occasional objects and animals haunting the canvases. The figures are invariably female, constrained or restrained, balancing, poised momentarily on a threshold or awkwardly reaching out to or clasping something. Balanced or about to fall? Trapped or escaping? Often the poses are impossible, despite being superficially convincing. But I don’t see these figures as powerless as they grasp, search, and resist, seeking a way through an ambiguous and obscure sense of space.

I love working with colour though I prefer to mix from a relatively limited palette with each piece. The compositions are rarely planned, usually emerging from the suggestions generated by intuitive placing of shapes and brushmarks. The disruptive, disjunctive processes and marks I use are as important in reflecting my lived experience as the resulting ambiguous imagery.

For me, the presence of the unexpected in the imagery is an invitation to consider the surreal contradictions characterising today’s world. We live in a post truth society, hypnotised and paralysed. Each day sees a new set of conflicting facts and interactions, adding to our uncertainty. Our encountering of the familiar everyday often seem at odds with the packaged alternative reality mediated by omnipresent social and mainstream media in a digital world. The inescapable sense of dissonance that results when confronted by mediated “reality” increases feelings of alienation, helplessness, fragility and entrapment. 

How does anyone navigate through this?