Original artwork description:

In this increasingly neo-liberal world we increasing have to put up with justices through fear of losing more than we have already conceded. The Uberesque world whittles away at employees rights and previous legal agreements are cast aside as if they meant nothing.

This leaves us in a strange position of having to tolerate what is intolerable to us just to survive.
We are there but not there in the same way we were before, we are visible still but strangely invisible, part of but also separate form, involved but semi detached.

I use the vertical scores of white and coloured oil paint to obscure the model who is there but not with the same presence as before.

This is the sixteenth painting a series of paintings I have embarked on, called "Sinister Selfies"; a project of paintings which distorts the idea of selfies. Instead of being snapshots of rampant narcissism in various sunny or celebratory locations, they instead invite and allow the viewer into a world which implies darker human realities such as addiction, co-dependency, trauma, terror, abuse, disgust, self loathing, disintegration of self, imination, redundancy, bullying, fascism and the effects of neoliberalism on our lives.

All areas of human experience close to my heart, so to speak.
Instead of snapshots of mindless self idolatry these sinister selfies give us a peak into other's lives and their discordant emotions and psychology and also into our shared communally lives generally and more presciently.

They reveal the aspects of self and humanity we would rather hide away, the sometimes unpalatable, even disturbing reality behind the facade we maintain in public.
Essentially I use a icon of our time, the Smartphone selfie, to turn a our gaze onto so-called darker elements of the human condition, mainly using heightened vibrant colour, distorted imagery and odd sized canvas.

Materials used:

oil painting on linen canvas

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