My aim is to produce visually stimulating silkscreen prints that intrigue the viewer and hopefully enable them to establish a narrative for themselves. Although I do have my own reasons behind each work and know what it means for me, I do not wish to give an obvious explanation for the work as I created it to remain ambiguous. I created the works as a series, and with the intention of them being viewed as a sequence, although they can also be interpreted as individual images.
My work explores the notion of dreams and hallucinations, or scenarios that could represent either of these. This stems from a fascination I have with listening to people’s interpretations and recollections of their own dreams, and the bizarre inner workings of our subconscious. When we dream we have no control over what our minds choose to show us, and I like to play with this vulnerability. As my work has changed and developed, I have built upon a ‘character’ as a way of creating a protagonist which appears in nearly all the works, sometimes multiple times in the same print. This evokes ideas surrounding doppelgangers, identity and ambiguity. I often work with vintage photographs/retro imagery, taking images from theatre, cinema and the domestic setting, acting as a reference to memory and the past. I take inspiration from a variety of artists, mainly photographers of the surrealist tradition such as Francesca Woodman, the film work of David Lynch and Louis Bunuel, and the collage juxtapositions of Sigmar Polke. All of these artists work with narratives and play on ‘dream stories.’ Woodman in particular worked with role-playing and self-portraiture, which I have adopted in my own practice. I have also referenced writers including Angela Carter and Gabriel Garcia Marquez who explore fantasy and ‘adult fairytales.’
The process involves methodically creating high contrast black and white screen positives using photo editing software, combining both my own and found imagery. Once scaled up to the desirable size, I make the image greyscale and convert it to a ‘bitmap’ to pixelate it slightly to prevent the loss of detail in the print and add depth to the image. I then expose the positive onto a silkscreen, which can then be printed.
My work explores the notion of dreams and hallucinations, or scenarios that could represent either of these. This stems from a fascination I have with listening to people’s interpretations and recollections of their own dreams, and the bizarre inner workings of our subconscious. When we dream we have no control over what our minds choose to show us, and I like to play with this vulnerability. As my work has changed and developed, I have built upon a ‘character’ as a way of creating a protagonist which appears in nearly all the works, sometimes multiple times in the same print. This evokes ideas surrounding doppelgangers, identity and ambiguity. I often work with vintage photographs/retro imagery, taking images from theatre, cinema and the domestic setting, acting as a reference to memory and the past. I take inspiration from a variety of artists, mainly photographers of the surrealist tradition such as Francesca Woodman, the film work of David Lynch and Louis Bunuel, and the collage juxtapositions of Sigmar Polke. All of these artists work with narratives and play on ‘dream stories.’ Woodman in particular worked with role-playing and self-portraiture, which I have adopted in my own practice. I have also referenced writers including Angela Carter and Gabriel Garcia Marquez who explore fantasy and ‘adult fairytales.’
The process involves methodically creating high contrast black and white screen positives using photo editing software, combining both my own and found imagery. Once scaled up to the desirable size, I make the image greyscale and convert it to a ‘bitmap’ to pixelate it slightly to prevent the loss of detail in the print and add depth to the image. I then expose the positive onto a silkscreen, which can then be printed.
