Practitioner’s Statement
My childhood upbringing was always incorporated around art and the ocean, my family has a burning passion for art, so I’ve always been surrounded by the language and deep thinking. Before being a Darwin local I was raised right by the beach in Torquay, Victoria.
My Artwork called “Homes lifestyles”, size 76.5cm tall and 101cm cm, is based around how much my two homes have moulded me into who I am today, my intention was to tell that story through a visual context. Using symbolic features and collage I explored the use of patterns to tell the story of two homes and two very different belonging feelings.
I aimed to express ocean life and surf culture with the opposite life of bushwalking, red dirt, and dust in Darwin. I represented past and present through colour by splitting the background into two parts with the left side done with a water pattern and the right was patterned with stripes going vertical ways in all different shades and tones of browns, yellows and orange resembling the colour pallet of Darwin.
The concept of the practical had personal meaning to me, band the techniques were influenced by many different artists such as Kehinde Wiley who inspired my treatment of backgrounds whilst exploring culture.
Challenging myself to tackle such a large canvas taught me to be patient with acrylic paint to achieve detail. Many techniques were learnt during this time like glazing, dry brushing, and tonal contrast. This canvas carries such a strong story of my life and the feeling of belonging to two places that I call home.
