Working from an archive of photos depicting different social situations captured by myself or close friends, photos are used as reference to be transferred into a new medium. Combining the materiality of oil paint with a figurative narrative that explores the nature of early adulthood, the paintings characterise the ephemeral moments of transition between social situations. These short-lived junctures between friends are doused in memory, often finding themselves situated in somewhat dreamlike surroundings blurring the line of fiction with the real world.

 

The material and unpredictable qualities held within oil paint hold great value to myself, absorbed by the differing ways the medium can be applied and perform against the canvas has long been a fascination of mine. The mental chatter of the outside world is put to one side when faced with the surface, a meditative state where the possibilities of paint become the entire focus.

 

Thinly applied washes of oil sweep across the canvas to conceive a looming mist of memory that bleeds and branches off into the surface. The result constructed is an environment rich in colour somewhere between pipe dream and actuality. The paintings are formed from both emotion and feeling as much as they are a past truth. I find that through the act of painting, memories can begin to blur and distort, becoming sometimes altered from the original where a new situation is born through the pursuit of paint.