MATERIAL PRACTICE

My paintings are made on found canvases, never fully erased. These surfaces are products of abundance. They are discarded not because they are exhausted, but because they no longer fit a prevailing logic of novelty, productivity, or value. Working with them places the practice inside a wider landscape of excess, cultural, material, and economic.

The task is not to feign perfection or become seamless, but to learn how to work from within what already exists. This means recognising what cannot be changed, while refusing the assumption that only the new, the clean, or the optimised is worth attention. Attention shifts from what is lacking to what is possible.

Painting over these discarded materials in a restrained, often minimalist language of nature creates a deliberate tension. It questions how we consume, not only objects and resources, but images, labour, and bodies. The work sits with the discomfort of living in a world of apparent abundance, while knowing that both material and planetary resources are finite.

In this work, the acceptance paradox is held materially. The canvases carry scars, revisions, failures, and wear. Rather than hiding these traces, I work with them. The surface is not perfected; it is inhabited.

Learning to love faults does not mean denying hurt. It means acknowledging damage without allowing it to dictate value. The work explores how scars can become structure and how constraint, memory, and vulnerability can be channelled into resourcefulness, variation, and creative force.

Acceptance here is not about repair. It is about working with what remains.