Somewhere Between Lost & Found
We never get to where we thought we were going.
It was only years after art school, in a cramped room in a shared house in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, that I truly began to understand the purpose of art. In that relatively uninspiring corner of the world, I started a project that felt like the first one I could claim as entirely mine. It was the first time I allowed myself to confront feelings through art. It wasn’t about creating something ‘pretty.’ The word "art" had already begun to feel like a shackle, a term burdened with a thousand misunderstandings, especially the notion that art exists to soothe, to prettify, to heal. I had no interest in that. Art, for me, was never about happiness as an end goal. If happiness exists, it is as fleeting and elusive as sadness. To chase it through paint would be a lie, a betrayal of art’s honesty.
Art became, instead, a search for truth, a quest to explore the full range of the human condition — from sorrow and rage to the fragile moments of confusion. It had to be rooted in emotion, my emotion. What else could it be? If it wasn’t personal, then what was it? A facsimile? An empty gesture? Art that isn’t personal isn’t worth making.
In art school, I was adrift. I had the ability to draw and paint, but I lacked a sense of purpose beyond validation. Art was a means of filling a void, but it also saved me in ways I didn’t understand at the time. Drawing was the one thing that made me feel less lost.
Then came my first project that started answering the questions I had been carrying around — "Happy Shoppers" I called it. It was a commentary on the dissonance I saw in the world. I’d sit in the high street, sketching people shopping, but none of them looked happy. They were bored, indifferent, trapped in some kind of trance, moving through life seemingly without purpose or joy. Back in my room, surrounded by unfinished paintings, I used these sketches as the basis for larger pieces. They weren’t portraits of individuals; they were fragments, symbols, reflections of a much bigger emotional landscape.
The bedroom studio became a backdrop for after-parties, a space for discovery, often filled with people — strangers at first, but then part of the work itself. Conversations shifted between the absurd and the profound, and yet there was always something raw and unspoken that emerged. That was the real power of art: the ability to provoke feeling, to create space for the unexpected. In that, I found affirmation, a sense of purpose. It was, and still is, what keeps me going.
My work has evolved in appearance, but it remains rooted in honesty. It’s not in perfection that we find truth, but in the ruptures, the breaks, the chaos of life’s unedited moments.
These works — these accumulations of paint — are an attempt to translate these learnings into something tangible. A celebration of existence's messiness, the strange, unsettling joy of uncertainty, and the quiet resilience of being human.
It was only years after art school, in a cramped room in a shared house in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, that I truly began to understand the purpose of art. In that relatively uninspiring corner of the world, I started a project that felt like the first one I could claim as entirely mine. It was the first time I allowed myself to confront feelings through art. It wasn’t about creating something ‘pretty.’ The word "art" had already begun to feel like a shackle, a term burdened with a thousand misunderstandings, especially the notion that art exists to soothe, to prettify, to heal. I had no interest in that. Art, for me, was never about happiness as an end goal. If happiness exists, it is as fleeting and elusive as sadness. To chase it through paint would be a lie, a betrayal of art’s honesty.
Art became, instead, a search for truth, a quest to explore the full range of the human condition — from sorrow and rage to the fragile moments of confusion. It had to be rooted in emotion, my emotion. What else could it be? If it wasn’t personal, then what was it? A facsimile? An empty gesture? Art that isn’t personal isn’t worth making.
In art school, I was adrift. I had the ability to draw and paint, but I lacked a sense of purpose beyond validation. Art was a means of filling a void, but it also saved me in ways I didn’t understand at the time. Drawing was the one thing that made me feel less lost.
Then came my first project that started answering the questions I had been carrying around — "Happy Shoppers" I called it. It was a commentary on the dissonance I saw in the world. I’d sit in the high street, sketching people shopping, but none of them looked happy. They were bored, indifferent, trapped in some kind of trance, moving through life seemingly without purpose or joy. Back in my room, surrounded by unfinished paintings, I used these sketches as the basis for larger pieces. They weren’t portraits of individuals; they were fragments, symbols, reflections of a much bigger emotional landscape.
The bedroom studio became a backdrop for after-parties, a space for discovery, often filled with people — strangers at first, but then part of the work itself. Conversations shifted between the absurd and the profound, and yet there was always something raw and unspoken that emerged. That was the real power of art: the ability to provoke feeling, to create space for the unexpected. In that, I found affirmation, a sense of purpose. It was, and still is, what keeps me going.
My work has evolved in appearance, but it remains rooted in honesty. It’s not in perfection that we find truth, but in the ruptures, the breaks, the chaos of life’s unedited moments.
These works — these accumulations of paint — are an attempt to translate these learnings into something tangible. A celebration of existence's messiness, the strange, unsettling joy of uncertainty, and the quiet resilience of being human.