The oscillating glimmer of a mirror ball, the buzzing of a neon sign, the repetitive pattern of the dollar bill - the experience of these objects have become symbols of our popular culture. They are now ingrained in our psyches, continually luring us in, and leaving us addicted to the material madness. It is here, at this intersection of desire and dependence, that my work is born.
A self-taught multidisciplinary artist, I create paintings, multimedia works, prints, and even explore the frontiers of NFTs in a way that defies labels or being placed in some designated art historical box.
When you first encounter my work, my obsession with the maximalist aesthetic is undeniable. Through a mixture of allusions, I subvert societal preconceptions with a novel approach to ideas of Pop Art. Movie stills and comic book heroines are recreated in my vivacious saturated colour palette, nostalgic architecture is pixelated somewhere between a computer screen and a Lichtenstein comic strip, and vintage floral china is inscribed with suggestive text all make their way into my growing arsenal of appropriative imagery.
So how did this style, or rejection thereof, come to be? In my life, I have been fortunate enough to travel the world. I have learned about a diverse array of peoples' distinctive takes on materialism and the emblems that transcend our borders. I take from my journey, building a new visual language of my collection of experiences. The vintage, the historical, the seemingly antiquated are infused with new life as I rip them forth into the contemporary. I recreate these notions of the ‘now’ with detail, precision, and my own personal flair.
My practice has become a story - a story of myself and a story of the constantly evolving times we live in. As I engage with elements of absurdity, I trick the eye with my trompe l'oeil depictions, bringing a visceral and illusory quality to the textures and subjects in each of my pieces that leave viewers reaching out to touch. My unorthodox melding of subjects enchants viewers as I reject the taboo notions of kitsch through my own whimsical reimaginations. Each piece is critique encapsulated in a sense of humour through the conversations I orchestrate between the past and the present.
We, as a society, are constantly moving at an exponential rate burdened by the proliferation of ideas in our internet age. My work calls it all to a screeching halt. The eras, the icons, the fads accumulate in a cultural pile up before us. I engage my photorealistic and illustrative painting skills, incorporate mixed-media, and integrate technological components like digital neon, into a visual time warp that delves deep into our subconscious fascination with a globalizing consumer culture. From the Golden Age, through the rise of media in the late 20th century, to the present day with internet memes controlling our interactions with one another, my work allows us to witness the emergence of a collective language of materiality. My artistic practice becomes an act of identifying, manipulating, and overthrowing a regime of consumerism; a way of life that devours not only goods but media, information, and cultures.