Page 52 - Winter Issue

Your artistic journey includes roles as a painting assistant and freelance artist, as well as conducting
workshops. How have these diverse experiences shaped your approach to your practice?
I often find that the responsibilities of being an artist in the modern day extend far beyond just creating art. As someone
who has only just begun my artistic journey, I have pushed myself to adapt to what is required of a contemporary artist
which includes a diverse array of experience, production, forming connections, and sharing knowledge. Not only have
these experiences provided a greater insight into pursuing and jump-starting a career as an artist, but also shaped my
practice and encouraged me to produce unique work while fostering a supportive network of creatives.
How do you approach balancing the visionary elements with grounded Techniques?
I often view my work as a marrying of the old and the new. I take from historical and traditional processes and
references which I adapt to reflect contemporary narratives. I believe that this way of referencing what has come before
us, with ideas about the current world and future, illuminates a human connection that stretches through time. It
showcases the overlapping ideas, feelings, and emotions that artists have been expressing throughout history. Art is
often a gateway into imagining a better future by illustrating an image of which we can not yet see.
As an artist just starting your career, are there new themes or mediums you are excited to explore?
My work often visualizes aspects of homoerotism and a queer perspective yet there remains a consistent contrasting
force of melancholy or unsettling imagery. I often consider these elements to be aspects of the outer world inflicting on
the bubble of queer surrealism. Although I enjoy visualizing and reflecting these feelings in my work, I feel as though my
comfortability in my identity and sexuality is developing beyond the need for queer surrealist bubbles. Or perhaps these
spaces of comfortability have expanded to the point where internalized homophobia and a need to conform no longer
affect them to the same extent. In any case, I have begun to develop ideas for exploring radical queer joy. This idea came
as both a consequence of my changing worldview as well as an observation of the media and society's obsession with
queer misery. Although queer misery's methodology of emotive storytelling increases the social acceptance of queerness
within the heterosexual world. Queerness and queer individuals begin to exist as a lesser. Queerness is looked down
upon with a condescending sympathy. In a society that seems adamant about representing queerness through a lens of
misery and suffering. I wish to open up a new discussion that explores the euphoric joy and happiness of day-to-day life.
From these ideas, I wish to illustrate snippets of life, faces, and memories that glimmer through my mind. A time
capsule of mundane and extraordinary moments that will extend a branch of hopefulness to young queer individuals
and normalize queerness and queer relationships within heteronormative society.
Head of the Buck

Oil on linen,
130x85cm, 2024

Joab
Oil on linen,
60x50cm, 2024

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