The Expanded Field of Painting in a World Full of Clutter

2025

The Expanded Field of Painting in a World Full of Clutter (2025) is my exploration of painting as both a practice and a conceptual space within the context of our overproduced, ecologically fragile world. Merging artistic research with environmental concerns, this thesis navigates the intersections of creativity, sustainability, and materiality. Through personal reflections, historical perspectives, and contemporary art practices, I examine how painting extends beyond its traditional boundaries and adapts to an era defined by climate anxiety and excess.

The physical copies of this thesis have been hand-bound using waxed, homemade paper—continuing my commitment to sustainable, tactile art-making.

To read more, download the PDF here.

Undulations

2024

Acrylic and oil on canvas with beads

120cm x 100cm

Remnants and Ruins

2025

17 strips of handmade paper and mixed media hang from line on hooks

The Remnants emerged from the Ruins, a series of experimental biodegradable paper works created from pulped everyday detritus. Initially existing as individual fragments, the Ruins explored material transformation and impermanence. Now, in the Remnants, 17 surviving pieces have been suspended together, forming a delicate, floating composition. Hung with jute loops, they shift with the air, casting intricate shadows that emphasize their ephemeral nature. This installation invites reflection on cycles of decay and renewal, challenging ideas of permanence and waste. Through their fragile yet intentional arrangement, the Remnants transforms discarded matter into a meditation on interconnectedness and resilience.

A selection of the individual pieces from the Ruins, made between 2024 and 2025 can be seen below.

XII

XIII

XIV

VII

XVI

VIII

XVII

XVIII

IXX

Planck Length

2023

Ink on Paper

150cm x 200cm

Conatus

2023

11 Intaglio Prints of Canvas, Akua on Paper

Each 23.5cm x 23.5cm

Hyphae

Hyphae series of double-sided paintings which grew from playing with materials new and familiar, using paint, natural inks, recycled textiles to build up shapes and forms mimicking the structural elements of fungi (hyphae). Layers of colour and varying opacity build up to imagine the magnification of mycelium created through discovering and revealing textures, imprints, and marks. Patterns develop through the process of rotating the orientation of the canvas, informed by the elements visible through one side of the canvas to the other, resulting in double sided works, hung from the ceiling like a cross section of mycelial web in glass.

The series was first exhibited in a solo show, Threadbare, which found its visual language through its raw shabbiness and exposure of frayed weft and weave. The works exist in dialogue with our evolving reckoning of the natural world, focusing on the incredible yet obscure fungal matter that forms the backbone of life.

As the paintings are double sided, they can be hung on a wall either way round or suspended from the ceiling showing both sides. There are wooden batons at the top with nails for installation with hooks and a baton at the bottom to weigh the piece down.