ARTIST STATEMENT

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Glitter, Colour, Chaos.

Capitalism, Happiness, Emotion.

As someone who experiences a wide range of intense emotions, I often struggle to talk about what my paintings are about. My moods can be so up and down that my paintings can change drastically daily. However, I am learning to work with this.

I explore the contradictions and intricacies of modern capitalist culture; oversaturation of opportunities paralleled with loneliness and feelings of being completely lost. I find modern culture to be so warm and yet so cold and isolating at the same time.

Coming from Northern Ireland, where there is a tradition of using dark humour as a coping mechanism (with the popular channel 4 show Derry Girls being a great example) I have learnt that the best way for me to cope with darker emotions is, in fact, in light-hearted ways. From inside jokes to dark humour, I explore how humour can be used as a coping mechanism, or as a light-hearted way to make sense of darker topics.

 I have a close attachment to pink, and glitter, and very bright colours. They, combined with childlike aesthetics and symbols make me feel safe. If something pisses me off I paint it. I write on my canvases, but often paint this over, only revealing certain parts. Maybe one day ill reveal more. Sometimes I conjure up worlds as a form of escapism - dream like worlds inspired by reality, made up of aesthetics I find beautiful, but also acknowledging the pain, the ugly and the confusion too. I paint the mundane alongside the eccentric, playing with the ‘up and down’ mood this can give to my paintings, overlapping the mundane with the intense.

My painting practice is material focused and experimental and I like to push the boundaries of my materials, often mixing traditional painterly materials with cheap and tacky childlike craft ones, like sequins and google eyes. I like the challenge of combining the ‘tacky’ with the ‘classy’. Sometimes I appreciate the tacky, even accentuate it, while other times I enjoy the challenge of making the ‘tacky’ look expensive. I think this comes from my BA days, where I felt a real pressure to have high quality art materials despite just leaving high school.

Throughout my works, I use a lot of pinks and glitters, playing with traditional feminine aesthetic in non-traditional ways. I enjoy having reoccurring elements in some of my paintings, such as my abstract version of a drone. The drone was used in protests to argue for Free, Safe and Legal abortion access in Northern Ireland, and I seem to paint it when I get angry, adding it to more light-hearted Capitalist symbols such as paintings of Louis Vuitton tote bags.

 I think I’m getting better at talking about my work.