Contemplating the world through the lens of deep time fills me with awe and wonder. Imagining the eons of the past and projecting into the distant future transforms everyday life: making it feel less routine and more extraordinary. Clues from the deep past, like the ginkgo tree outside my home—a species that grew in the forests before the dinosaurs—connect the present to this profound timeline. Considering our brief moment in the vastness of time evokes awe and wonder, making me feel small and yet deeply connected to humanity and everything around us.
I distill these observations into textural ‘paintings’ inspired by the principles of historical icon painting. My work is stylized rather than naturalistic, with timelessness implied by the absence of shadows and logical space.
My work combines both painting and sculpture. I start by hand-carving sintra board to create a shallow bas-relief surface. I then apply acrylic paint using traditional techniques like impasto and glazing. Sculptural forms built from dried acrylic paint are affixed to the work, and inclusions of glass and air-drying clay add to the dimensional quality.
Simple geometric forms structure the composition. The carved lines symbolize time and lineage, while circular forms represent cells and celestial bodies, capturing a frozen moment in the impossibly long transformative processes of geology and biology. The picture frames are integrated into the artwork, transitioning the viewer from the outside world. This further blurs the lines between what is ‘natural’ and what has been fabricated.
The final work creates tension as viewers are drawn into the two-dimensional illusion of paint, and then confronted with a tangible three-dimensional object.