For Figment, my solo exhibition at the Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh in January 2026, I created a series of paintings using oil and distemper paint (pigment bound with glue).
Recurring motifs include cherished objects, family members and ancestors, childhood play, dining tables and picnics. These elements jostle for space in ambiguous environments – part recalled, part invented. Like actors and props on a mutable stage, they play out a narrative that is not fully rehearsed.
The painted worlds feel like memories, yet remain fictional. These figments of my imagination emerge from a meticulous engagement with the formal language of painting: colour, mark-making and the interplay of shapes. The contrasting qualities of oil and distemper balance each other: vigorous strokes sit beside scraped and translucent passages and finely traced line. From these abstract foundations, imagery surfaces, evolves and sometimes vanishes, until certain forms are held in place. What is captured may feel surprising, strangely familiar or quietly unsettling. Though fixed on the canvas, this textural matrix feels transient – as if all might dissolve at any moment, much like a dream upon waking.
