Usually a body or a body part, human, animal, or doll, at a moment and place of pleasure such as a beach or a moment of horror at a place of execution, these moments are sought out and ways of representing them in paint are explored. Source materials are images from archives and the media, which are selected for their emotional resonance. Paintings are also based on constructed tableaux.

 

The animal series explores human emotions, perceived through images of animals - in the laboratory, the home or wildlife films.  We use animal metaphors to picture desire, affection, cruelty and the movement between visceral animal and rational human. The images explore the perception of the animal in the human and the human in the animal, and the confusion of the human and animal perspective. The ‘Touch’ series of paintings is based on photos of laboratory experiments with orphan monkeys that provided them with an inanimate ‘mother’.

 

The ‘Doll’ paintings are based on tableaux. The dolls act out behaviour that moves from mischief    and amoral innocence to delinquency and transgression. The work may lead to the evocation of a nightmare world where Bosch meets Melanie Klein. There is an exploration as to where to place the work in a spectrum between play and horror.

 

 A doll is used to enact adult drives and emotions and as a basis for speculation as to how much of the adult is in the infant and visa versa. The images question whether we should be nostalgic for the innocence of babyhood, or fearful of memories of anguish. The templates remain speculative, enabling the creation of an imaginary world/place of doll activity.

 

Although the work is done in series, paintings from one series are juxtaposed with those of another. Figures at pleasure could be juxtaposed against figures about to die.  All references to a particular time or place are erased to isolate and accentuate the posture, gesture or fragment of the figure. Through decontextualisation and the unidentified, a prolongation and postponement of a moment is being sought to arrive at a redrawing, reinterpretation and renewal of view. By blurring an anguished or sensual moment and erasing its specificity, another dimension such as colour or tenderness may be revealed, presenting an oscillation between suffering and pleasure, coexistence and separation, remembering and forgetting.