"In this story, the other-worldly creature is a fragment of the protagonist's psyche, a sliver of his repressed inner life made visible."   -Marguerite Atwood

My artistic practice is based on the creation of a central character which I situate in a contentious site of struggle. Various references from literature, film and mythology help form the main narrative that runs through out the work.

Particularly intriguing to me is the unearthing of human nature's innate region, that from which comes the ability to transform oneself into something seemingly incomprehensible or violent as a need for survival. This has led me towards an   investigation of the moment where one is pushed to the point of becoming violent or absurd or of collapsing, as a reaction to ones own environment. This narrative is the underpinning of the work and motivates the outcome of the central protagonist in the paintings. The embodiment of this struggle is reflected in the expressive and seemingly urgent quality of the painted gesture, manifested as an additive and subtractive process which is reflective of an internalized struggle while painting.

The central figure is created from fragments of shelter, transportation and animal parts, yet remains unidentifiable as a whole. It's components are functionally problematized, rendering them inadequate in any conventional sense. Conversely, the fractured elements are assembled together in order to express a manifestation of conditions that exists outside of the norm. With its anthropomorphic limbs and extremities, the object-creature teeters between the familiar and the strange. Disjointed and out of place the being begs be identified.

Within its architectural framing the creatures I create have a significant anthropomorphic value, which transforms them into both shelters and beings at once. These beings are personified through the use of paddle like limbs and human extremities. They also possess fur like skin and claws metaphoric on an animalistic quality. The objects in my work are also imbued with animal qualities of fur, skin, claws and limbs. The fragmented animal acts as a metaphor for the hidden desires and repressed instincts that fester in the human unconscious. I am fascinated by the animals ability to be ferocious under duress as a parallel for our own ability to potentially transform into violent beings as the fight-or-flight survival instinct is set off.   The shelter provides the stage for the protagonist to act out its metamorphosis from object to creature. Being immersed in an environment the creature can no longer understand, the shelter within the object is where its deepest inhibitions are explored and revealed, and from which a creative birthing of conditions arises. The personification of the object draws pathos towards its struggle to re-invent itself, reiterating the strangeness felt in urban and societal artifices and one's own vulnerability in trying to adapt.

  As such, the work not only addresses elements of shelter and mobility as a need for survival, it also investigates questions of transformation, identity, adaptation and self-preservation in the context of uncertainty.