The emotional hurt that we experience throughout our lives, how that feels and how it manifests itself within and around our body are important threads running through my work.

 

I want to portray how we imagine we appear to others during times of vulnerability; the scars, welts and bruises, reveal our emotional as well as our physical fragility. They tell the story of our present moment as well as exposing remnants from the past, things that normally go unseen. 

 

I base my large portrait head drawings on small and indistinct documentary photographs, newspaper clippings or screen shots. I don`t know these women personally, nor the details of their stories beyond their circumstances. These works are, most importantly, about honouring the subject, physically as well as emotionally; communicating their fragility, strength and beauty. 

I hope that I am giving them a presence, if not a voice. 
 

They have become, over time, series of work: ‘The Women Who Walk Into Doors’ are nine drawings about domestic violence. I am also working on an ongoing and unending series about all forms of forced marriage, titled ‘Brides’.

It is the injustices of these circumstances that drive me to make the work.  I also intend to plainly provide relevant statistics concerning the abuse of women worldwide whenever I show these works.

 

The torsos, usually headless and therefore anonymous, always bear aspects of myself and my own experiences, in some senses they’re self portraits, even if I am sharing the body with someone else.

 I often alter the state of the human body. Throughout my work I have always portrayed: armless figures, figures that are part animal, hearts and other internal organs, and mouths sewn shut.

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The process of creating a drawing is often one of building and destroying, manifesting thoughts and emotions by scarring, staining and peeling the surface of the paper. Continuously applying mediums to, and then ripping them away from the surface of the paper, leaves behind layers and traces on the skin.