"Lido lineup" Painting

Through my art I address confusing rules of framing sanity and indifferent approaches to analysing humanity. I engage in the development of historical and arising issues on artistic responses to mental disabilities. During my BA at Wimbledon College of Arts I developed a massive collection of suitcases full of photographs, letters, personal belongings and mementos from 1920-1950 that I saved from the local tip where my dad worked. I now use my collection as my inspiration for many pieces of my work. Working from photographs of static confused looking characters lacking the awareness in the act of posing for photos I am able to intercept situations with facially expressed moments of trauma envisaged amongst decades of discontent. This work comes from a sense of psychological indifference resulting in either physical actions expelled or the mental representation of what may occur. Driven by contradictions when depicting mental torment through portraiture I find myself obsessed with creating seemingly simple faces through minimal line. This has turned out to be my most pained and challenging development when summarising work. By juxtaposing masked characters in conflicting settings I can portray an uncomfortableness I both detest and desire. I create painterly backgrounds that evoke the eager anticipation of uncomfortably loud characters facing confronting situations. I paint unnerving situations loaded in colour that allow my hectic linear eyes and chattering teeth to narrate the scene. I abruptly break the dimensional boundaries of painting by attacking the idea of framing with loaded oil bars spilling out of the canvas. Currently I am creating work inspired by living with neurological, complex and long-term health challenges. This area in my practice has been led by my development of epilepsy as an adult. I now feel curiously inspired and intrigued by a potentially very destructive time in my practice. I have begun adapting my perspective on artistic perfection as not to mimic external aspirations but instead seeing an internal disorderly motivation in my approach. I have new experiences of art engaged development after seizures that have led me to open up some previously engaged judgemental boundaries. I found producing art work to be an extremely successful way of recovering from post seizure injuries when my brain trauma needed encouragement to reconnect myself to the cognitive awareness of the situation.