G with Comb

Life Lines, 2024, Oil and Acrylic on Panel, 122cm x 122cm, Painting

Life Lines

Identity in Life Lines is not treated as a single, stable image. It is formed through the accumulation of experiences, relationships, memories and personal details that shape both how we see ourselves and how we are understood by others. Questions of mental health and self-perception sit within that more complex picture of the self.

Each work grows from an exchange with the sitter. Personal objects and the stories attached to them become part of the encounter, while fractured mirrors allow different viewpoints, details and fragments of the person to coexist within the Photography. The mirror is not a metaphor for a broken identity, but a device for bringing multiple parts of a life into the same image.

These photographic studies become source material for large-scale Paintings, where areas of hyperreal detail sit against more expressive passages of colour, surface and mark-making. The movement between precision and abstraction allows the portrait to shift between what can be immediately seen and the more elusive experiences, memories and states of mind that also form a person.

Throughout Life Lines, The Pink Bear recedes from protagonist to a quieter, watchful presence. Rather than dominating the portrait, it accompanies the sitter, introducing ideas of support, vulnerability and transformation while leaving the individual and their history at the centre of the work.