Painter & current third year Fine Art student based in Bath
My present paintings are inspired by passages from Sigmund Freud’s writings on ‘The Uncanny’, particularly the unheimlich, a term he refers to throughout the essay. The unheimlich translates from German as the unhomely. Freud elaborates on these terms as being ‘the familiar with the strange’. In my paintings, I am trying to explore the idea of the unhomely place. ‘Homely’ would mean a place that is meant to be familiar, close, warm. The homes I paint are taken from my collection of photographs from the mid 20th century that I have been accumulating. These photographs most often amateur snapshots depicting domestic and banal scenes of suburban homes and interiors, void of human presence. The homes within the images feel unknown, unfamiliar, distant; Being from a distant time that has past and from a place that would physically distant and unknown to us.
I have been thinking of the concept ‘post-memory’. Post-memory is how the act of displaying photographs together intentionally can create a certain narrative and storyboard behind the images, to be read a certain way by the viewer, creating a false memory in their mind. I find strange elements within the images that i am drawn to, for example, a door left ajar or a dent in some bedding; These such elements that indicate something has occurred within this now empty space. I want my paintings to propose a mysterious narrative and inspire the viewers to ask questions regarding the spaces depicted.
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'Why is there nothing when there should be something? What happened to produce these ruins, this disappearance? What kind of entity was involved?' - Mark Fisher quote from The Weird and the Eerie (2017)
I choose to paint the image rather than just display it on its own because the act of painting adds an extra layer of distance between the original space and what the viewer sees; the act of viewing a painting of a photograph of an unknown space. My practice is also equally based around referencing back to the medium of the photographic print itself. I find oil to be an imperative medium to my practice as I am interested in being able to achieve a flat, even surface of paint replicating the surface of a printed photograph and being able to blur the objects within the painting to recreate the softness of the image, representing elements typical of a photographic print. I am inspired by the work of Gerhard Richter, particularly his blurred photo-paintings that capture the similar flatness I am aiming for. Similarly, I have been looking at his series Atlas, where he has displayed an archive of his collected photographs. How the photos interact when displayed together and the act of publicly displaying private family photos interests me.