As part of the creative process images emerge in the mind. Some we capture, others escape. Those that we depict are then in retrospective post-creation rationalisations organised into a coherent narrative. We want to make sense of what we create. Consciously we decide that some pieces become more central to the core concept of our investigation. Others become offshoots that whilst still being closely connected to the main concept, they exist as an individuated gesture.
Carioecus, oil on paper, 84 x 59cm, 2019.
The male figure symbolises the Lusitanian (ancient Iberian) sacrificial ritual associated with Cariocecus, the Lusitanian god of war, and the destroyed building represents modern conflict. The idea is to transpose an ancient myth of war to the contemporary history of conflict. The grid-like lines attempt to disrupt the relationship between the male figure and the tower block and as a way of creating some “disorder” in the image. I find that rough lines cutting across an image can themselves be and depict acts of violence (inflicted on the image) and can add more energy or a sense of uneasiness and disruption to the composition.
Putana Thought Slut, mixed media on paper, 84 x 118cm, 2019.
This diptych represents violence inflicted on those who defy the establishment. On the left is St. Agatha being tortured by two men and on the right is Alan Turing splitting into three disjointed figures. According to legend, fifteen-year-old Agatha was a Christian who made a vow of virginity and rejected the amorous advances of the Roman prefect Quintianus. Enraged, he had Agatha arrested and tortured. She was whipped, burned with torches, and her breasts were cut off with pincers. Alan Turing was an English mathematician and computer scientist who, after helping the Allies defeat the Nazis, was prosecuted in 1952 for “homosexual acts”. He accepted chemical castration treatment as an alternative to prison and died in 1954 from cyanide poisoning. This composition symbolises the different personas that Turing had to adopt in order to survive as a gay man.
Kinky Is the New Love: Chapters I & II, 40 x 30cm, spray paint on canvas, 2019.
This particular series attempts to subvert heteronormative gender myths and serves as a metaphor on how sexuality has been portrayed in the arts. The relatively small scale of the paintings is intended to make the viewer look closely, as if becoming a voyeur. Using a stencil graffiti method creates a simple icon-like imagery that can represent how stereotypes, or myths, are established through the use of visual languages that are adopted to symbolise and disseminate particular ideas.
Untitled, spray paint and acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30cm, 2019.
These three pieces are an evolution into a more abstract and symbolic language where the use of pink, which is associated with femininity and cuteness, is employed in a subversive way to symbolise, with the figurative use of weapons, violence and destruction. They also incorporate the idea of the burnt skin (which is impressed using a net and spray paint).