The Void

My work is a fantasy world constructed for its inhabitants. The construction begins with the selection of its participants. I scour books, magazines and the web in search of a figure or group of figures that I can make a personal connection with.

I have a fascination with 19th Century black and white images of individuals engaging in activities, which have a strange and even slightly alien quality. These people have become distant from us through the passage of time. The knowledge that they are dead and buried allows me to re-animate them and form my own past or future playground.
The Victorians were the masters of the sentimental. I am drawn to photographs from this time period. The romantic Victorian era embodies a search and an obsession with an unobtainable utopia. It fascinates me that this search for a lost Eden is still evolving in our contemporary culture of compulsive consumerism. Despite our shift in values, the end product of our utopian search feels equally empty. My work is an embodiment of the veiling of this void.

The characters I select emote a morbid tone, which shapes the growth of the landscape. They remain encapsulated in their artificial world. This sickly sweet construct evokes the timeless and futile search for Utopia.