1. Over the past two years, your work has shifted from installations and collages to a very simple and delicate form of painting. In your own words, how would you describe these works as being humble, and what has prompted this transition?

The shift in my work coincided with the decision to work from home, and the idea of making works for myself, to fill my surroundings with paintings I’d want to live with. This meant reasserting what my own tastes are and having a bit more control over the outcome of the works I was making. Considering myself as the first person viewer, might sound obvious but it isn’t something I was in the habit of doing, I didn’t think of a viewer, I came from a place of being obsessed with improvisation and the desire to reconcile the feeling one gets when drawing with painting, I wanted to be able to treat the blank canvas like a piece of paper. Throwaway. It was all intuition and feeling, the outcome didn’t matter. There was also the desire to depict things that felt more within my reach or within my abilities, technically but also subject wise, as a result I feel more aware of my limits of what I can do as a painter.

2. You are accustomed to setting up your studio and living space in the same building. When we initially planned this exhibition, you mentioned that the works on display are all imaginings from within your house, and you have been moving frequently over the past two years. The objects in your works range from mysterious, androgynous figures to innocent, anthropomorphized animals, as well as depictions of houses. Are these works self-portraits? How do you understand the relationship between these objects and yourself?

The paintings I make are always going to be self-portraits to some degree, but its never a conscious decision, and its usually the painting that speaks to me about my situation after I’ve made it. So it’s rare for me to establish a theme before hand and make work accordingly lets say, although it did happen last year, but only after realizing that I kept wanting to make scenes of flooded houses, I decided to build on the idea and make a body of work based on it as it fitted with what I was dealing with in my life. Recent experiences like moving studios, moving from the house I lived in for a few years, separating from a long term partner all appear as metaphors in the work, the painting with the snail is a good example of this, the anthropomorphized snail carrying his home on his back as its about to enter a stormy rainbow portal which I see as entering into a new life/world.