ARTIST STATEMENT

As a joint honours student studying both Fine Art and Art History for my BA degree, the History of Art has always played a big part in my artistic practice. With my days spent between studying the academic subject through lectures, and the practical side of creating artwork in the studio, I constantly and unconsciously consider how artists of the past influence my role as an artist today. From physically using imagery from the history of art in collages, to producing paintings that comment on our interaction with art within a gallery setting, I have produced a range of artworks throughout my degree. Working in a multi-disciplinary manner by using the mediums of paint, screen-print and collage over the last three years, I have now turned my focus to my real passion of painting. From studying the History of Art, my painting technique is quite traditional. Thus, with my more recent pieces, I have tried to push my painting technique towards a more expressive way of working. This has involved working on a larger scale with more fluid and loose brushstrokes. Paint’s palpable quality and the way in which layers can be built up to create a realised scene fascinates me.
Carol Duncan’s theory of the art museum as a ‘ritual site’, with the viewer walking through and re-enacting a silent, ritual-like routine of looking up at the venerated artworks, has been central to my current practice. I have explored our interaction within the gallery space in both a contemporary ‘white-cube’ setting and in more traditional art history museums. Artists Pablo Guzman and Karin Jurick depict how we interact with artworks in the gallery setting. Mamma Anderson and Dexter Dalwood have encouraged me to push my painting technique when depicting an interior space, whilst Kerry James Marshall’s paintings have inspired me in the sense that they comment on museum culture and the value of art. John Berger and Walter Benjamin’s writings on the notion of the ‘image’ and its role in an age of mechanical reproduction and mass media have always influenced the theoretical concepts behind my work.
At the very start of my degree, an artist’s talk with Pippa Young inspired me to incorporate my interest in the History of Art into my practice. I contemplate where my practice stands in todays art world, with a strong focus on the past but using modern methods of combining painting, printmaking and collage. I plan to complete a MA in the History of Art at the Courtauld institute of Art in London and develop my artistic practice alongside this. With career aspirations in curation and the cultural heritage sector, my paintings that comment on our interaction within the gallery space have never been more relevant.