WHERE HEARTS ONCE SLEPT is a deeply personal exploration of memory, longing, and childhood. Through these paintings, I invite viewers into the emotional landscapes of my own recollections; places where light, colour, and feeling intertwine. My work acts as a portal back to the moments of innocence and wonder I shared with my siblings, dancing through gardens and building imaginary worlds. I approach each canvas intuitively, allowing gesture, colour, and texture to guide me rather than following a fixed plan. The process itself becomes a fluid and imperfect act of remembering. In this body of work, I’m interested in how nostalgia holds both comfort and ache, how the act of painting can preserve and transform emotion. Theorists such as Pierre Nora and Krystine Batcho have influenced my understanding of memory as a living, affective process rather than a static record. Through abstraction and expressive mark-making, I aim to capture not what childhood looked like, but how it felt; luminous, fleeting, and full of quiet longing.
My practice explores memory, longing, and nostalgia through large-scale oil paintings that bridge abstraction and figuration. I work intuitively, allowing gesture, texture, and colour to guide each piece as emotions surface from beneath conscious thought. Painting, for me, is a process of remembering — a way to reconnect with the sensations of childhood and the people and places that formed me. Through this, I aim to capture not literal memories, but the lingering atmosphere of them: the warmth of sunlight, the sound of laughter, the ache of something lost. The recurring themes in my work are shaped by my own experiences of growing up, family, and time’s quiet distance, turning each painting in to an emotional landscape through which longing is not mourned, but gently reimagined.
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