‘Portrait of a dress’ won the Society of Women Artists Karin Walker Young Artist Award at the Mall Galleries in 2023, was selected by the prestigious Women in Art Prize, was lonlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize, and was preselected by the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and the New English Art Club. It is loosely based on Andreas Kronthaler’s MM corset dress for the Vivienne Westwood Spring-Summer 2022 collection, and explores both the identities of things and their relation to the identities of humans.
‘Nikki in pink’ is a commission for a private collection consisting of works by Tracey Emin, Gavin Turk and others. Nikki passed away to cancer and pink was her favourite colour. She was a strong local figure, and I have tried to show a more intimate, complex and authentic side to her.
‘The Bladesmith’ explores how both the concept of work, and the particular work we engage in, can affect our characters.
‘Portrait of a sculptor’ is a portrait of acclaimed sculptor Laurence Edwards.
‘Layla’ is an interplay between AI and myself. Over many months I typed paragraphs into a text-to-image-generating AI app and then painted a tweaked version of one of the images that was generated. My resulting painting both depicts AI as a mirror of societal stereotype feeds and as something that can be prompted and therefore directed by us. The colours are loosely reminiscent of the watermelon in subtle support of a ceasefire in Palestine and Israel.
‘Lewis, hung-over and eating tinned pineapple’ is my second portrait in oils. It humorously overturns historical concepts of wealth and status symbols like pineapples in the discipline of portraiture.
‘Chashah, pregnant with Anisha’ is my first oil portrait, completed in September 2022, four months before being selected as a Royal Society of British Artists Rising Star in 2023 (and again in 2024). It depicts pregnancy, an overlooked subject in the history of portraiture, as is race.
Invited by the Women in Art group, ‘Nose ring’ was specially made for the famous Art on a Postcard initiative, to raise money for The Hepatitis C Trust. Other artists over the years include Paula Rego and Grayson Perry.
‘Rachel, on bpd break’ is a small study using oil paints and genuine 23ct gold leaf.
Commissioned pencil portraits of faces or whole bodies, in my style mixing the Baroque style with a modern definition, are available from my studio.
These oil paintings of movement, which I call ‘flicpics’, take inspiration from the idea of flipbooks and film reels to explore movement both within one painting as well as in the relationship between more than one painting. They engage with photographic elements of shutter speed, focus, bokeh and depth of field, but are interested in the unique idiosyncrasies of oil paint in the act of translation (between photographic and painterly techniques). They further explore the place of narrative in art, and in our developmental society at large. I am interested in capturing daily actions that are often thought of as insignificant but that reveal much about character and life.
‘Playing the violin’ 1 and 2, oil.
‘Arrangements’, framed and unframed, oil.
‘A blustery day in Elmshurst Park’, framed and unframed, oil, mounted onto black bin liner. In times of hardship, I try to find beauty in the overlooked and in doing so try to readdress their value in our judgemental gaze.
Two flower oil paintings, titled ‘Looking through 1’ and ‘Looking through 2’, looking through a bouquet of flowers and playing with translating photographic techniques to oil.
‘Jennifer Pitcher’s shadow’ is the first of a mini-series of postcard-sized paintings of artists with their art.
‘Bruise I, on the thigh’ is the first of a series of bruises, exploring the topography of trauma. It was used as the cover image for my debut poetry collection Making Sense. The other two in this series (not pictured) make direct use of topographical and geographical maps.
Two nipple paintings inspired by the presumed ‘Portrait of Gabrielle d'Estrées and Her Sister, the Duchess of Villars’ explore the unsettling nature and touch of nipples in the Fontainebleau School style and raise gender equal, race equal and cancer issues in a non-sexual way by questioning the paused time and space in terms of control, confidence, consent and over-analysed physicality. ‘Curtains’, my first oil painting ever in summer 2020, aims for the poise and antiquity of a Renaissance still life, and ‘Meating’, the raw, carnal aspect of flesh (close-up of ‘Meeting’ at the end of the page, after ‘Scar 1’).
‘Scar I’ is the first of a series of scars (others not pictured), after Fontana. Unlike Fontana, who cut his canvases, these are stitched back together and make a feature of the needle, thread and oil paint.
Diptych I, or ‘Our flesh is music so ephemeral’, in the Smoke Series is for English National Opera Assistant Director Chris Hopkins’s touring show, ‘Project Impressions’. It depicts the ephemerality of music with two hidden ink poems woven inside the smoke. One of the poems is from my recent debut poetry pamphlet ‘Growing’ published by Broken Sleep Books.
‘Forest fire’ or ‘Beauty does not condone’, ‘Extinction Rebellion’, ‘Smoke stacks’ and ‘Bushfire’ all have short one-line poems hidden in UV light, and come with a UV torch to see them.
‘A part of my body is dead,’ is an abstraction on Trent Parke’s photography, referencing colourful industrial smoke. It has an older version of a poem from my forthcoming debut poetry collection ‘Making Sense’ published by Verve Press, written in UV light all across the oil painting and visible under blacklight torch, provided with the painting.
Triptych I, or ‘In a world where you can be anything,’ sees smoke as a metaphor for life, fleeting and within certain constraints, and has a hidden ink poem from my forthcoming debut poetry collection ‘Making Sense’ by Verve Press.
Smoke Eagle I has an older version in ink of a poem from my forthcoming debut poetry collection ‘Making sense’ by Verve Press, hidden in it.
‘Comrade’, inspired by a baby gorilla from The Gorilla Organisation. The poem, from my debut pamphlet ‘Growing’ published by Broken Sleep Books, is hidden in the veins of the foliage and goes anti-clockwise around the gorilla from the bottom.
‘Phoebe’, an orphaned black rhino from the World’s largest rhino sanctuary, Care for Wild and Rhove Africa. The poem is incorporated into the bottom of the drawing.
Drawing samples from ‘Grey matters’ for MIND charity, a project combining portraits with a musical soundtrack incorporating speech from interviews I undertook with those directly or indirectly affected by mental health.
The three sea anemone paintings are inspired by the film ‘My Octopus Teacher’ and what humans can learn from ocean symbiosis, urging us to discover and protect oceans more. They celebrate habitat as a life form and encourage symbiosis between creatures in environmental protection.
(Photos in this order:)
UPLIFT (photos 1-5 and photo 9) is a jewel-like sub-series, exploring the idea of frailty, weight, balance and preciousness, as well as how size can affect artistic presence and gravity. They are made from bismuth and pewter, and balance stone and sea finds. They reflect the instability and confinement of mental health.
(Photos 6-8) take the UPLIFT sculptures and frame them in boxes to create wall art, with one-line poems hidden in UV light or written in paint.
MOLTEN (photo 10) is a sub-series of pewter sculptures with coffee filter ink poems. The idea was to unite an Asian Tradition (the fortune cookie) with a Finnish Tradition (pouring hot pewter at NYE) with a more general one (note in a bottle) to challenge the industrialisation and elitism of the commercial art world.
Unique bronze casts of personal clothes using the lost wax method provocatively reference the double-speak sign at Auschwitz – Arbeit macht Frei – to raise awareness of current cheap labour slavery in the fashion, clothes, and textiles industries, without suggesting at a parallelism between the two. ‘Arbeit macht Baumwolle’ is written into the original label and attached to the bronze cotton top, which is not cotton like the label states but bronze; likewise, ‘Arbeit macht Spitze’ is stamped into the bronze sides of the lace doily. Fabrics I and II have words written in the oil-painted shadows. All are hung on the wall.
Approaching a sculptural element – brass metal – as painting instead of sculpture, these patinated, layered and orchestrated sheets play with the ideas of interpretation and meaning, which is all the more paramount in our time of fake news, double speak and misplaced trust. There is no paint, just controlled patina.
In order of appearance:
‘Bushfire I-V’, patinated brass abstract ‘paintings’ of bushfires and jungles, raising awareness about the importance of trees to our ecosystem.
‘Wonderland’, patinated brass.
‘Atomic I-III’, tempered and patinated brass.
They still need to be mounted onto the wall for display purposes.
Suggesting at personal searches for self-narrative and the shaping of identity through colour and fabric, the elements that clothes heavily rely on, ‘Swatches’ are sensual, emotional embodiments of the mundane. Each close-up oil painting is of a fabric from my wardrobe, exemplifying each person’s unique quest to present themselves according to their own images, or desires, of themselves. This series views paintings as trade swatches, highlighting the industrialisation of art, like the industrialisation of clothes. It also hints at the needs of some people, especially those who are on the autistic spectrum, to focus on images bit by bit instead of an avalanche of visual stimuli that so often accompanies our modern worlds.
(Photos in this order:)
CAST OFF (photos 1-8) - Patinated bronze casts of discarded rubbish, exploring notions of preservation, recycling and worth, and questioning our approach to waste and climate action, in our era of climate emergency and romanticised art.
CORALATION (photo 9) is a moving bronze sculpture with carbonated coral. It has a soundtrack composed for classical instruments featuring underwater coral sounds recorded off the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. It also has three poems. The idea was to raise environmental awareness by highlighting the similarities between humans and corals, notably in stress management.
