The Detached Cultural Organisation Artist Residency focused on portraiture and a single sitter between 2020 - 2023
Titled More Beautiful Than You Think — after Jean Dubuffet’s 1946–47 portraits — it seeks a raw, unconventional beauty. Like Dubuffet, I’m interested in animating the painted surface.
The project continued an enquiry into how feeling can be made visible and an ongoing investigation into what is portraiture/anti portraiture.
During the process the sitter lies horizontally — a position of vulnerability — though the work hangs vertically. Photographs were taken, then printed and then re-positioned onto the face of the sitter before rephotographing. The crushing activates expression randomly. It creates tension between illusion and surface. The face becomes both image and object. What mattered through the painting process was that the painting acquired a life of its own.
Titled More Beautiful Than You Think — after Jean Dubuffet’s 1946–47 portraits — it seeks a raw, unconventional beauty. Like Dubuffet, I’m interested in animating the painted surface.
The project continued an enquiry into how feeling can be made visible and an ongoing investigation into what is portraiture/anti portraiture.
During the process the sitter lies horizontally — a position of vulnerability — though the work hangs vertically. Photographs were taken, then printed and then re-positioned onto the face of the sitter before rephotographing. The crushing activates expression randomly. It creates tension between illusion and surface. The face becomes both image and object. What mattered through the painting process was that the painting acquired a life of its own.