"I am in no doubt that I am an artist but as I have never actively pursued a career in art or tried to sell my work in any meaningful manner, at best I can only view myself as an amateur or at worst, a mere hobbyist. An outsider? My various mental ailments always meant that my progression through art education was to be inevitably stuttering. However, when I finally started my undergraduate degree I had hoped it would be a springboard to a more creative mode of living, instead it turned out to be a trap door. Although I had excelled within the parameters of my course and graduated with top marks I suffered an existential crisis of confidence and no longer knew what type of art I wanted to produce or what type of artist I wanted to be.

​

I decided to do a Duchamp and give up art but rather than play chess I decided to pursue my other love in life, drinking. Although it was my intention to stop producing, against my better judgement within three years the creative impulse had returned. However, my drinking had reached industrial levels of consumption and my mental health had deteriorated into sporadic episodes of psychosis. It was at this stage I started to create work that was highly esoteric, personalised in nature and never intended for public viewing. This allowed for a level of creative freedom and imaginative experimentation which facilitated an intense dialogue with myself, questioning the ontological nature of my being through the artistic process. It was during this crucible of creativity, the intense enquiry into meaning and deep investigation of my values and motivations that an alter ego manifested itself within my research. It was at this stage that I, finally, decided to declare myself an artist.

 

This act represented the first stage of a symbolic death and then rebirth into something new. Drawing heavily upon mythological thinking I have started to see myself as the archetypal hero whose story is enacting within my own life. This collection of this work is the accumulation of a five-year plan to incarnate and solidify a new mode of being."

​