What are your main concerns within your practice?
I am focusing on the ability story telling has to build an emotional relationship to a thing. I have always been a landscape painter, but I want my images to be more active. So by turning to digital painting – a technique used by illustrators and concept artists – I can produce many more paintings from my experiences and tell a story with them. My goal is to convey my love for the landscapes I have been lucky to witness and adventures in getting there. From snorkelling in Hawaii to Hiking in Antarctica and sleeping under the Milky way in the Sahara in between!
I am focusing on the ability story telling has to build an emotional relationship to a thing. I have always been a landscape painter, but I want my images to be more active. So by turning to digital painting – a technique used by illustrators and concept artists – I can produce many more paintings from my experiences and tell a story with them. My goal is to convey my love for the landscapes I have been lucky to witness and adventures in getting there. From snorkelling in Hawaii to Hiking in Antarctica and sleeping under the Milky way in the Sahara in between!
What are your influences?
Photographer Chris Burkard teamed up with Disney artist David McClellan to create a book about a boy who falls in love with nature, based on Chris own experiences. Disney is also a great place to look for impactful stories; Zootopia is a story about prejudice and has so many amazing lessons and messages about our own behaviour. Also Hamilton, the hit musical about the founding of America told in the image of America today, with a black rapping George Washington. These are examples of stories used to convey messages and it is clear that because of their naturally engaging nature, they hold so much power to do so.
What is the first thing you do and your process?
As I am basing my paintings from my own photographs, the first thing I have done is travel. It is important for me that these images are all true experiences, but told in a format usually reserved for fantasy and fiction. So there is potential for disbelief.
What do you enjoy most about the studio?
The new studios are amazing because we are all finally in the same building, so you can go down the hall and be in a studio of printmakers or photographers. We didn’t have that before and I love being able to so easily see what everyone else is working on.
How has your work changed over the course of your degree?
I came into University with my landscape paintings and tried to apply a message to them, to justify them as works but I never could. In 2nd year I tried to focus more on storytelling with a short film about my experiences with depression. But due to time constraints I could not make it, so I turned my half constructed set into an installation about my journey through the year, from building the set to falling back in love with painting and travel.
In this final year I have realised I should combine to the two. The landscapes have meaning, but it is personal to me, so if I can share that through a story I will have created a piece of art that represents myself as well as the landscapes in so many ways.
What are your plans after graduation?
I want to tell stories in a visual way, from photographing expeditions and travel to working as a concept artist in an animation studio, anything that involves capturing a world and telling a story and I will be happy!