My work
I have always been drawn to artworks that extend beyond decoration — works with a story that draws you in, something with a bit of an edge or a sense of urgency and depth that invites reflection. I guess I like pieces that question our place in the world and try and tell a bit of a story about society today: how technology and the modern world has shaped us and how we now rely on it. It's changed our relationships with nature and with one another and completely changed how we view the world around us. It's brilliant and enlightening but also scary and baffling.
My favourite artists have always been those who disrupt and challenge rather than simply create pretty images. I think you need art that reaches beyond surface aesthetics so it connects on a deeper level with people - it doesn't have to be obvious or overtly direct but I believe there has to be something in an artwork that sparks an idea or makes you question something or see something in a new light to establish a deeper conceptual connection. Meaning, not merely appearance, is what gives a piece its lasting power.
My style has evolved over time, shaped by a long standing love of that collision between pop culture, street art and a bit of everything else. I find it hard to put my work in a particular stylistic box - it is what it is. I'd say I'm instinctively a maximalist rather than a minimalist — I love my work to have a density and a chaos, and a real saturation of space. I thrive on the visual busyness of a piece and on that sort of charged energy that emerges when you combine weird images, textures, patterns, symbols and you compress them, lock them together and make them fight with each other and see what they do. I love that chaotic energy that's created in that creative process. The works are like weird vibrating jigsaws of mixed-up visual language that (i hope) reward sustained looking: the works draw you in, reveal themselves gradually, and continue to offer new discoveries over time.
I like working in black white as it strips away distraction. Without colour, the compositions, and their contrasts, rhythm, and form become a new language. For someone interested in complexity and density, and layered meaning, monochrome forces the work to succeed on its underlying bones rather than just a surface appeal - although I think it works on both levels which is cool with me. Black and white gives the artworks a natural drama and I look to create work that disrupts with complexity, tension and meaning.
