ARTIST STATEMENT

My practice focus is human-nature connectedness, which I explore through bodies of work that consider all the ways in which we (can) change in relation to the natural world, and how it feels to be moved by and find belonging in (and to) nature. Each work is a reaching towards more expansive, dynamic and sensuous understandings of the human experience as nature.

Foundational to these inquiries is the concept of embodied ecology, which celebrates the fluidity between human bodies and the more-than-human world. Foregrounding porosity over boundaries, and relations over othering, it invites us to consider - with humility and wonder - the human body as both contained within, and custodian of, worlds within worlds within worlds… Embodied ecology provides my studio with a framework for studying the macro and micro environments that our bodies inhabit and hold, breaking down binaries while illuminating infinite dimensions to our relationship with nature. 

Parallel to this is my ongoing fascination with both the biological processes of transformation found throughout the natural world and human psychological resistance to and desire for change. Moving between symbolism and science, scale and time, the tangible and the intangible, personal and collective, my work ponders on the tensions that exist between our potential for and the inevitability of change, and the different qualities of engaging with transformation in nature, with nature, as nature — for nature. I am intrigued by the concept of dis-integration as a portal to re-integration; composting systems that disconnect us from one another and nature.

All studio explorations are guided by sensory-led creative practices, inspired by diverse cosmologies and often grounded in research collaborations. I begin new works with ‘wild drawing’ — experimental, embodied mark-making that heightens ecocentric, present-moment attentiveness to the surrounding environment. Sometimes these drawings are carried into new paintings, but often it is the simplicity of the practice itself that is vital to the beginning stages of new projects. When painting, I work intuitively with colour, pattern, form and symbols, layering semi-translucent washes with gestural brush strokes and intricate detailing, and occasionally rotating, cutting-up or reassembling substrates as part of the process.

Over the past four years, creative writing and multidisciplinary collaborations have become integral to deepening and extending my visual articulations of the sensorial. Short stories and poetry often surface alongside and in conversation with my artworks, and I enjoy expanding my studio to invite movement, architecture, sound, masquerade, lighting and design practitioners to co-develop new forms of immersive storytelling for the public realm.

Portraits by Brendan Delzin. British Council Americas project, Trinidad 2023.