Create Your First Project
Start adding your projects to your portfolio. Click on "Manage Projects" to get started
Gresham Street, London
Project type
The Invention of Fancy
Date
May 2023
Location
London
The Invention of Fancy
Eight dayglow dreamscapes, painted in oils, disrupt expectations and teeter on the surreal. Exotic animals cool off in opulent swimming pools and maximalism reigns.
Inspiration came from a book by Hollywood silent movie star Marion Davies who lived, for a time, at Hearst Castle in California as mistress of controversial American publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst. The castle, which overlooks the Pacific Ocean, was the couple’s very own Xanadu. Now a tourist attraction, it was once a playground to the rich and famous, replete with 42 bedrooms, 61 bathrooms, 19 sitting rooms, the famous Neptune swimming pool, and a menagerie of exotic animals. There is nothing minimalist about it.
Borrowing from this, The Invention of Fancy explores the concept of a utopia constructed by the imagination, which is materially more achievable on canvas. Playful distortions and use of colour, and animals given unexpected proximity to people, all contribute to the unlikeliness of the scenes. For some, it will be the absence of darkness and fear that will seem poignant and revealing.
The acid-trip colour palette is not new for me. I expect I will be accused of gilding the lily in the quest for ever brighter and ever louder combinations. I approach each canvas as a colour puzzle that needs to be solved, and it borders on the obsessive.
I hope it will have a dopamine-effect on the viewer. But, as well as joy, also present is nostalgia and loss, for something that never was, and never could be. The process has been frustratingly evasive, but at the same time, these are places that can be anything I want them to be.