Artist Talk

Artist-Talk-Presentation.pdf

Download PDF • 14.57MB

Throughout my practice I have had a focus on highly detailed drawings and paintings of faces as well as the body linking to themes such as emotion and experience. During previous studies I decided to step back and look at simple techniques that I could incorporate into my work that could help emphasise these themes.

When researching these techniques I fell down the rabbit hole of colour theory, in particular simultaneous contrast, a phenomenon that happens when two adjacent colours influence each other. It was here where I found an article about 1920's theatre and how stage lighting was used in conjunction with the colour of props, makeup, and costume, to alter the stage settings of shows.

After experimenting with this phenomena I began to implement it into my work, disfiguring the face, alongside the emotional effects of colour and quickly noticed a change in audience reaction with the work I was producing, sparking my interest in viewer interaction and how each person sees things differently. This interest in how much of the image is determined by perception, rather than just depiction, pushed me into new directions—especially in thinking about hoe absence and fragmentation can shape meaning.

As I've continued to think about drawing, my interest in its perceptual side continues to grow—how the act of seeing directly influences the way an image is made. Drawing can be understood not just as representation, but as a record of perception: every line, mark, or hesitation reflects how something is seen in the moment. This makes it less about producing an exact likeness and more about capturing the experience of looking itself. What intrigues me is how drawing can hold both accuracy and falsity at the same time. By accuracy, a drawing can capture a truth of perception—how a shadow falls, how two colours affect each other. At the same time, that accuracy is alongside falsity, because a drawing inevitably distorts, simplifies, or misremembers what is seen. In my own work this plays out when a line follows the contours of a nose with accuracy, yet in the same drawing an eyes slips out of proportion or dissolves into colour. Both moments are equally true to the act of seeing: one records clarity, the other records instability. The perceptual side of drawing, then, is less about proving what is correct and more about showing how perception itself is unstable. This way of thinking about drawing as a record of perception, a reflection of how something is seen in the moment, connects back to the source material I work from.

Behind my practice is a large archive of photographs that I have accumulated over many years. This archive functions almost as my sketchbook, but instead of drawings, it contains moments—staged photographs, candid shots, childhood snapshots, and things that catch my eye such as a pattern I notice in a bowl of noodles or the cross-section of a red cabbage. What interests me is the way these photos can shift in meaning depending on how they are used. Sometimes I work with the whole image, letting the subject remain intact, while other times I zoom in on an ara and allow that detail to become the foundation of a new composition. In this way, the archive is less about preserving memories and more about breaking them open and rearranging them to create new forms. The way I see and process these images is also closely linked to my neurodiversity, which shapes both the techniques I use and the kind of imagery I am drawn to.

Neurodiversity can feed an art practice by offering alternative ways of perceiving, thinking, and working.For me, this comes through three qualities: a heightened attention

to detail, sensitivity to colour, and an interest in repetition/structure. Another important

aspect in my life and art practice is my abnormal facial recognition. This informs my

practice in two distinct ways. The first, by drawing from photographs I can produce a

portrait that appears accurate to how most people perceive a face. Second, I manipulate

portraits in real-time that reflect how I see faces myself—often distorted and altered in

unnatural ways. Because of the abnormal facial recognition, I like to ground myself before

I do any work by closing my eyes and tracing my face with one hand, while following the

movement with a pencil in my other hand. Doing this reminds me of the physical features

and the typical structure of the face, while also producing a line drawing that often lead to

compositional ideas for my work. Thinking about perception and identity in this way also

led me to explore theories which provide a framework for understanding the unstable

nature of self.

In Sophie Calle’s practice there is a consistent theme of psychoanalysis, particularly in the

way she explores intimacy, desire, and the construction of self. Her projects often centre

around the ideas of looking, absence, and repetition, all of which align closely with

psychoanalytic theory.

Her work highlights the instability of identity, presenting the self as fractured and

dependent on the perception of others, linking to theories of subjectivity. The repeated

use of strategies such as concealment and confession allows her practice to operate

almost like a psychoanalytic exchange, where the process of revealing also involves

withholding. I started thinking about how I can use this framework in my drawings.

In April I produced partial portraits that still held the proportions of a face. These drawings

explored ideas of fragmented identity, where what is shown is equally as important as

what is withheld. For example, in this work the negative space is equally as important as

the drawn facial features as it introduces a desire to know more, in turn producing an

entire presence by the imagination of the viewer. By presenting only sections of the face, I

wanted to emphasise that we are never fully visible to others—that our outward

presentation is always partial, filtered through what we allow others to see. Working with

these partial portraits also gave me a way to experiment with absence. By leaving the

majority of the composition missing, gave the incentive for the viewer to fill in the gaps,

projecting their own assumptions or expectations onto the image. This exploration of

fragmentation set the stage for my next works, were layering and structure started to takeshape. I found the work of artist Annette Messager, who fragmented bodies to create

layered works.

Annette Messager utilises a fractured body in her work to explore fragmented identities

and the pressure of social normalcy, drawing from the psychoanalytic concepts of

vulnerability and the struggle for self-cohesion. One of Messager’s work, Mes Vœux (My

Vows) is a great example.

It is a circular suspended tangle of black and white photographs of various body parts;

hands, mouths, eyes, limbs, and private bodily areas. Each individual photos is labelled

with a different wish. Some are sweet and innocent, whereas others are violent or brutally

honest.The partial depiction of people cant decide if it wants to connect, disappear, be

seen, or escape, allowing contradictions to situate side by side, like separated body parts

that don’t fit together anymore, yet are still trying to be one. The core of her practice is a

thematic framework that is built around these contradictions and fragmentations as she

explores identity not as something that is fixed, but as something that is a shifting,

unstable construct. Around this time of looking at Messager, the name Melanie Klein

came up regarding her work around Object Relations Theory.

Melanie Klein is an Austrian-British author and psychoanalyst known for her work in child

analysis. In the 1920’s, Klein developed Object Relations Theory which is a concept that

suggests that a person’s personality and emotional health is shaped by internalised

relationships, particularly with early caregivers such as the mother. In this theory Klein

looks at what is called Annihilation Anxiety, a deep fear of psychic destruction, often

managed through the defence mechanism of splitting. Splitting occurs when the ego

cannot tolerate anxiety and so it divides experiences or people into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ parts

—for example, seeing a caregiver as entirely nurturing in one moment to then quickly

feeling threatened in another.

By July, my work had developed further after overlaying two of the partial portraits on top

of one another and holding them against a light source. Doing this revealed a completely

new image that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. This marked a shift in how I

thought about portraiture—no longer as isolated images, but more as structural

components of fragmented identities, where parts only make sense in relation to one

another.

When starting these works, I needed to differentiate between the layers and so began

working with the CMY colour system again, this time as a compositional tool rather than

for its visual phenomena. Beginning with a singular large drawing, I split the page into

nine, and then drew nine portraits as a new layer, and so on. By layering drawings, cutting

them in half, and rearranging them in different sequences, I began to create unexpected

collisions of colour and form.

Each rearrangement brought forward something different: sometimes areas would link

together with the facial features becoming more visible, while others would link with soft

colour forms flowing from one page to the next. Through this process, the portraits

stopped being fixed representations and instead became fluid structures, open to

multiple readings.

Laith McGregor’s practice consistently returns to drawing as its foundation, although his

career spans sculpture, installation, video, and printmaking. Drawing being central to how

McGregor thinks and works, is not just a preparatory step or secondary medium. He uses

it as a space to test ideas about identity, memory, and representation, often using the the

simplest tools such as biro, pencil, and ink.

At first glance they resemble the language of traditional portraiture: careful likeness, close

observation, and an emphasis of features. McGregor chooses to disrupt and complicate

these conventions. He exaggerates beards, hair, and other facial details, or repeats them

to the point where they function more as masks and less as identifiers.

The research that has guided the development of my practice and my work over the past

year has brought up many ares of interest that I have formatted into questions. The

questions that I am currently working through are:

In what ways can contemporary art function as a tool for communicating non-normative

cognitive perspectives?

In what ways can the disruption of traditional portrait formats reflect neurodivergent

modes of thinking or being?