Paintings

2023

2022

2021

2020 

 

 

Denim Dancers – these figure-based paintings and drawings have implied narratives that convey the humour, frustration, delights, and contradictions of contemporary experience. In this series I  depict figures in motion cropped to show only the feet and legs to highlight the psychological dance intrinsic to social interactions. 

My narratives allude to the allegorical or archetypical and sometimes in a painfully earnest or satirical manner and I draw references as much from social media as from myth or history. As a child I was terrified by most cartoons. The cacophony and the illogical suspension of disbelief deeply disturbed me. I now utilize elements of the visual language of cartoons, comics, and animation to access the power of these mediums. That power is the ability to deliver a subversive or conflicting message which belies the presumed and immediate accessibility of the image. 

Of late I’ve been obsessed with the idea of denim as a ubiquitous and quotidian global uniform and a garment material distinctly of the late 20th and early 21st century. Denim is unisex, utilitarian, desirable, and uniquely of our time. Many of these characters are clothed in denim. My depiction of denim garments on figures relates to the desire to flatten economic demographics and cross-cultural barriers with the aim of mutual understanding in order to create positive change for our shared future.

 

2019

 

 

2018 and earlier