Hope is the thing with feathers, 2022

The title of this painting is from an Emily Dickinson poem, the great American poet. How do you make an image out of an abstract thought or out of poetry? I wanted to make an image that evokes hope in a universal sense, coming out of darkness. T...

The title of this painting is from an Emily Dickinson poem, the great American poet. How do you make an image out of an abstract thought or out of poetry? I wanted to make an image that evokes hope in a universal sense, coming out of darkness. This painting was made on the Mark Rothko Art Residency at the Mark Rothko Art Centre in his home town of Daugavpils, Latvia. It was a fully-funded residency, selected by the panel of the Mark Rothko Memorial Trust (Rebecca Salter, current President of the Royal Academy of Art, London, Timothy Marlow, Managing Director of the Design Museum, curator, writer and presenter, Laura Culpan, Director of Artwise Curators and Paul Huxley, artist and Royal Academician). This was in August 2022 and completed in my studio in East London in 2023. This painting was recently exhibited in the institutional exhibition, ‘What This Awl Means’ (the LaLa International Art Collective and Guests) at the Künstlerhaus, Bregenz, Austria from October 6th-November 19th, 2023.