Artwork
icu.psd
When I open my eyes… I see you, going ape-shit crazy. This is a piece that attempts to convey a feeling inarticulable, or for that matter, even comprehensible. It expresses the unintelligible chaos of experience appertaining to the time I spent in ICU. Thumbs and fingers peel back Matter to expose the Mind. A representation of raw passion, pain, and desire. Legend exists in the mist. Poets ascend, Skeptics pretend. I felt eternally lost, then nothing at all. It was Magic. This piece focuses on finer details, offering one meaning that is universal but conveying another that is painfully specific.
2sday.psd
Pamela Anderson, Pam Grier, The man’s here. This piece is based on the song by Denzel Curry and Kenny Beats DIET_, with references to and lyrics from the track littered throughout the piece. I was listening to this song when I first sketched it exactly a year ago, and I saw a 2 forming in the centre of the page. I took it as a sign and made my first themed piece. The piece borrows a lot of its colour scheme from the album cover UNLOCKED by Denzel Curry and Kenny Beats, in which this track is featured, but like all of my pieces relies heavily on pop culture influence and turning little shapes into the things they resemble.
the.psd
The. That’s it. The beginning of a story, or The end. The most used word in the English language. It’s a piece that means so much to me, but also means absolutely nothing. Many of my pieces have strong references to the popular culture that I have been exposed to growing up, The is no different, but I tried to focus on more personal patterns, such as the carpet my Mum had in our living room when I was younger, or the workbench my Dad had in our garage. The concept came from an episode of Spongebob, the one where he has to write an essay by the afternoon and spends the entire time on The. It’s somewhat of a metaphor for my approach to anything new, I spend so much time worrying about the first thing, that I end up running out of time. Thankfully, this is just The beginning, and I still have plenty of time.
oic.psd
This piece is the one I’ve been working on the longest so far. Originally sketched back in October 2021, I have been sitting on this half-finished piece for over 8 months, struggling to do it justice. While my first piece, hmm.psd, will always be the one closest to my heart, oic.psd (full title “oh I see.psd) was one that stood out to me as having the deepest meaning. With this thought in mind, I wasn’t comfortable just throwing colour at it all willy-nilly, causing me to stop working on my artwork altogether for a solid 3 months with a fear of letting my own creativity down and trapping myself in a cycle of procrastination. Over the last little while, however, I’ve chipped away at it, filling in the gaps with themes that are truly close to my heart, including the largest section of unrecognisable symbolism in any of my pieces to date. The title Oh I See is a reference to the memory I have of originally sketching it, where I perceived it to be flipped 180° in some sort of dream state, hence the upside-down man on the moon. Therefore reading from top to bottom O I C, with the Sun representing the O, the Moon representing the C, and the design in the centre reminiscent of an eye.
shh.psd
A lot of my artwork relies on just drawing first and figuring out what it actually is after the fact. Sketched while on the phone to a friend of mine from high school, full title '“shh he’s sleeping.jpg” is an abstract representation of what appears to be some sort of sleeping entity. I believe it represents my own absence from the conversation I was having with my friend, as well my absence from everyday life at the time of creation. I spent a large chunk of 2021 emotionally confused, with art becoming the best way for me to visualise my thoughts, as well as acting as its own sort of therapy.
hmm.psd
Originally titled “this is where we all came from”, a reference to the 2017 Dynoro and Gigi D’Agostino dance hit “In My Mind”, hmm.psd was my first officially completed piece. As the original title suggests, the piece is a visual representation of the chaos of my mind, taking inspiration from the influential pop culture of my childhood and doubling as a reference to the hallucinogenic organised mess the piece embodies.