“This painting, Keeper of Hell, as it’s titled, was made when I returned to Newcastle at the beginning of my master’s. Alongside making the paintings, I was spending a lot of time researching ideas around hell and the underworld, specifically The Divine Comedy, and in particular Inferno.
I was especially inspired by the coded work of Robert Rauschenberg, who responded to Inferno in a very oblique, coded way, using his perceptions of the world around him and traces of ephemera he collected, working through transfer prints and lithographs. From there, I also began looking closely at the drawings of Sandro Botticelli.
This work is about the experience of looking, but more specifically the experience of looking inwards, into oneself. It’s about katabasis, that act of going down, the alluring but dangerous pull of turning toward the underworld internally. As someone who has experienced depression, that inward descent is familiar, and harmful, but also something that can be beneficial when it’s aided, when it’s supported.
Coming out of the portal, which is painted to echo the geometry of the throne angels with a central wound, there are two pink forms, either tentacles, liquid, or spurts, splashing outward. I think this idea of the precipice is something that runs through my work. It’s about the delving, the looking, but also the turning away, and the coding of trauma and difficult things.”