"All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie"

This project will aim to defy suggestions that the medium of painting is now exhausted, and advance my research into the ongoing relevance and validity of figurative (or ‘representational’) painting as a meaningful medium in the twenty-first century. In an era when previously trusted vehicles of truth have become compromised by widespread access to, and manipulation of, digital media (e.g. via Photoshop, YouTube, independent news sites, etc.), painting’s ability to mimic and distort our world has assumed a new, metaphoric potential. In the age of ‘post-truth’ subjectivity has become a currency that is no more or less reliable than the forms that challenged and eclipsed figurative painting’s claims to relevance before the Modernist era. In short, ‘representational painting’ has become ‘pseudo-representational painting’.
The paintings I propose will present gothic landscapes (channelling such artists as Arnold Böcklin, Salvator Rosa and Gustave Doré) as their principal setting – dark, stormy nights in the middle of nowhere. These visual environments will suggest an impending storm or catastrophe, populated by struggling, oppositional figures (clowns, dragons, robots, ghosts, vintage comic figures) – simultaneously ridiculous and deadly serious – engaged in illogical and apparently meaningless conflicts. My aim will be to present a version of the world where confusion reigns, where absurd figures engage in meaningless conflicts while the darkest of nights approaches – a reflection of our world in the 21st century, squabbling over nationalist concerns while the planet reels from inequality and climate change.