About me
I am an artist working in the UK. I come from an immigrant family which means that I don’t belong where I came from and I don’t belong where I’ve ended up.
This gives me a unique objectivity and enables me to filter what I see around me to provide independent insight without the weight of tradition and belongingness - or rather, it helps me create my own tradition and belongingness - my constructed folklore.
I work in digital media including video and illustration, oil paint and collage.
My art is as much about doing and thinking as finishing or achieving. I enjoy the possibilities to layer meaning and the variety of surface and image that oil paint and digital media provide.
You are invited to browse my website to find out more.
To view my work on canvas, board, paper and digital media, click on the “Shop” button in the right hand corner of the Home page.
You can also read my blogs and view stop motion videos below.
Blog posts …
Real Presences
My latest painting “Real Presences” was inspired by a recent visit to London. Based in and around Marble Arch, I visited the Moco Museum which has a permanent show of works by contemporary artists including the performance artist, Marina Abramovic. Her work is called Healing Frequency and invites the visitor to lie on benches which have embedded crystals or sit on chairs with crystals embedded in their legs. The experience is a spiritual one and invites you to absorb the healing qualities of crystals.
After Moco we went to a food hall Mercato Mayfair located inside a Grade 1 listed church, St Mark’s, Mayfair, which has a beautiful interior that glitters with gold mosaics, stained glass and statuary. The food halls are framed by Byzantine inspired columns and vaulted ceilings. Having grown up in a culture brim full of Christian iconography and the stories of the saints, I was still surprised at how shocking I found this capitalist repurposing of what was once a sacred space. To me the church, although deconsecrated, still has a spiritual impact, much as a deconsecrated graveyard still has a religious feeling even though the families of people who are buried there have also died out or no longer visit. Overall, it felt super weird eating ice cream beneath the saints looking down from stained glass and alcoves.
After our visit to Mercato Mayfair, we went on to sit in Grosvenor Square which has been somewhat hollowed out by the vacation of the old American Embassy with its massive gold eagle and gold frontage. Apparently, the old Embassy building was designed by Eero Saarinen, and is being “transformed” into a luxury hotel and retail destination called "The Chancery Rosewood" planned to open later this year. Echoing St Mark’s down the road, this building is taking on a new mantle. A statue in front of the Embassy has been covered up in a black rubber tarpaulin wrapped round with red tape to hold it in place (giving it a slightly S&M vibe).
I have tried to capture, in “Real Presences”, my emotions on seeing the capitalist takeover of a sacred space. The title refers to George Steiner’s book of the same title first published in 1989 and a seminal work for a generation of students looking for an alternative to post-structuralism in literature and art. Steiner’s main argument is that all art is “God-haunted”, a wager on transcendence. We can’t sum up artworks or explain them away through analysis. There is always something transcendent about a work of art - something that we can’t put our finger on.
In “Real Presences” I am trying to evoke the spirituality that can be engendered through Christian iconography and also the sorrow that, for many people in a secular society, it means nothing. It’s a rich language that has been lost. What to do with a beautiful church that has no purpose in a secular world? Allow people to come in and enjoy themselves and spend their money. Although I applaud what the Grosvenor Estate has done to repurpose the church so that it endures, and I am so pleased that not too much violence has been done to the structure of the church, I also feel quite sad that the rich vocabulary surrounding the diners and drinkers can’t be read by most of them.
To try to contrast the iconography of saints, with each saint having their own motif or symbol, such as St Catherine with her wheel, Saint Barbara with her castle, St Peter Martyr with the knife through his scalp, St Francis with his stigmata, St Lucy with her eyes on a plate, St Agatha with her breasts on a plate, St Agnes with a lamb and so on, I collaged a fashion model in an alcove alongside the saints. I also included two reclining figures on benches in front of the altar based on my experience with my son of the Marina Abramovic show at Moco Museum. This is another form of spirituality which runs alongside the language and scope of Christian experience. The rainbow refraction running down the picture plain tries to capture the magical experience of light shining through stained glass.
All in all, my trip to London was inspiring ….
Blog posts …
Nostalgia - Memories evoked by objects
I am currently working on a new body of work that explores the power of objects to evoke memories of the past.
Nostalgia comes from the Greek words “nostos” (return as in Odysseus’s return home) and “algos” (pain). The Greek meaning involves suffering evoked by the desire to return to one’s place of origin. All through Odysseus’s journey home he longed for the things and the people he would find waiting for him. This feeling sustained him through all his adventures, but when he eventually got home things weren’t as he had hoped.
Psychologists have examined the role of nostalgia in the human brain. See, for example an article published in The Psychologist, the trade journal for the British Psychological Society: “Nostalgia - from cowbells to the meaning of life”. It has been described as a compensatory mechanism to protect individuals against the deficiencies of belongingness. As Ian Sinclair says in “Lost London” it may involve “holding on to a past that never happened.” In this sense, memories involve creating rather than recreating the past. Memories for me involve creating my own personal folklore about my origins to compensate for my feeling of being an outsider where I have ended up.
As a child of Irish immigrants growing up in Britain in the 70s I was very much seen, through the prism of the IRA bombings, as an outsider. We were Catholics in a Protestant eco system, we were a potential threat, we were viewed with suspicion. Yet, on our return trips to Ireland in the summer holidays, we were seen as “the English cousins”, we were also viewed with hostility because British involvement in Ireland’s past was still very raw and ever present.
Even now I still feel like an outsider in both Ireland and the UK but I have created my own belongingness through the objects that my mother and father left behind them and childhood possessions which I have kept. These are family photographs, often from generations before I was born, ornaments that my mother collected such as Staffordshire flatbacks, silver objects, my great grandmother’s sampler, teddy bears and dolls. These have an ability to transubstantiate into my story, my origins, my belongingness.
Tarkovsky’s “Andrei Rublev”
My latest painting “Fire in the Farmyard” was inspired by stills from the film “Andrei Rublev” made in 1966 by the famous Russian director, Andrei Tarkovsky. People say that he used the film as a vehicle to express the pressures and limitations faced by artists living in a totalitarian system. Tarkovsky said of the film: “An artist never works under ideal conditions. If they existed, his work wouldn’t exist, for the artist doesn’t live in a vacuum. Some sort of pressure must exist. The artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn’t look for harmony but would simply live in it. Art is born out of an ill-designed world. This is the issue in Andrei Rublev.” What particularly struck me were the images of horsemen and horses set against a bleak landscape - it is set in medieval Russia. I started off with some carbon ink brush drawings of horsemen and horses based on stills from the film. Although I think the horsemen I initially drew must have been Tartars, they morphed into Russian Orthodox knights showing the cross of Cyril and Methodius (the saints who brought Christianity to Russia and Eastern Europe) which has two cross bars rather than the Roman single cross bar.
As an exercise at the Norfolk Painting School Diploma 2024/25 we were given a photo of a bland courtyard with mock classical buildings. The idea was to use this as a starting point to see whether we could employ it as an initial diving board to walk away from the strictures of the image or whether we would feel impelled to stick to the original image. I don’t know why but the buildings in the background reminded me of some of the buildings in Andrei Rublev and that was my diving board moment. It then became possible to imagine those buildings in a Russian farmyard on the Steppes with a horseman arriving suddenly in the foreground brandishing a cross. As I mapped out the picture on the board, the image morphed again to an Irish farmyard with low slung white buildings. Eventually, the image ended up as a lone horse without a rider, no cross and buildings that didn’t belong in Russia or Ireland. What changed everything was the colour choice. I immensely enjoyed juxtaposing pastel colours next to a battleship grey. I also enjoyed creating ambiguity in the background which could show a tree against the sky or could show a blazing fire. I also enjoyed surrounding the horse with a light magenta and suggesting its contours with lines. Originally I included an onion dome on one of the buildings but this changed to a more classical building that could be from a grand stable block or could be a derelict Methodist chapel. I hope this shows how a jumble of images and thoughts can be used to inform the ultimate image and direct random thoughts into conscious decisions about colour, composition and theme.
My next project - Rilke and colour
About a year ago I was introduced, in one of those many fruitful moments when watching content on YouTube, to the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. The Canadian book tuber *emmie*, @emmiereads, shared her love of this 19th century poet writing in German and this encouraged me to buy “The Poetry of Rilke” translated and edited by the American professor, Edward Snow. This was my window onto the world of “the poetry of things” - “Dinggedicht”. The goal of this type of poetry is:
“to present concrete objects (or a pictorially perceived constellation of things) with factual precision and in symbolic concentration. This descriptive exactitude results from a process of intense observation that yields insights, often ephiphanous in their overpowering suddenness, into the essential nature of things. At the same time this attitude makes possible the detached expression of inner experiences evoked through contemplative contact with the object … [the poet] renounces an inspirational poesie du coeur in favour of singular images and strives to penetrate to the innermost specificity of natural as well as crafted things as they are transformed into objects of art.” (From Michael Winkler’s “Dinggedicht” in The New Princeton Encyclopaedia of Poetry and Poetics, Princeton University Press, 1993).
This is epitomised by Rilke’s poem about a blue hydrangea - “Blaue Hortensie”. The sensibility of a painter is quite clearly evident in the words Rilke uses. He describes the leaves of the hydrangea as “like the last green in the paint pots - dried up, dull and rough”. He also describes the variegated and transient colour of the intense blue in the flower umbels which are likened to “old blue writing paper” which, when wet or exposed to sunlight, develops yellow, violet and grey. The sudden insight of the poet is revealed at the end of the poem when he sees in one of the umbels “a moving blue as it takes joy in green”.
Rilke spent some time in Paris working for Rodin and he also developed a fascination with Cezanne. Cezanne was looking at objects such as apples with the same intensity and investigative spirit. Rilke wrote a series of letters to his wife, Clara (herself an accomplished artist) about Cezanne’s work. The letters suggest a frustration at the inability to put into words what Cezanne achieved through painting. “An apple ceases to be edible altogether. That’s how thing-like and real it becomes, how simply indestructible in its stubborn “thereness”.”
I feel the same frustration (but the other way round) when reading Rilke’s poem about a blue hydrangea. I wonder how it is possible to convey in oil paint that intense observational wonder and sudden insight when looking at an object. I have been trying to get that message across in my paintings of objects remembered from childhood but, in that case, seeing the objects transports me back to certain specific points in my past. The objects have travelled with me into the present while those moments were fleeting and ended almost instantaneously.
This will be the basis of my next project - to try to recreate “Dinggedicht in paint”. Wish me luck.
Origins of Victorian Girl Band I & II
Why do children in Victorian photos always look so solemn? Why do they never smile? I have been researching photographs from the 19th century and noticed that photos were a serious thing. Girls, in particular, appeared to dislike being photographed and looked almost cross.
Move on next to the 2000s and imagine a girl band where the protagonists glare boldly at the camera with what looks like supreme self-confidence. They are daring you to question their dress sense, daring you to ask why they are worthy of a photograph. I like the idea that being photographed in a group gives each individual in the photo more self-confidence. The group dynamic might encourage otherwise shy, retiring individuals to lark about or show bravado. Being in a group or band would enable otherwise awkward people to show their brash side, show that they are “brat”. I get this feeling from the photo of a girl group (image to the right) who are wearing branded clothing in primary colours. They are in your face. Everything about the image suggests a slightly edgy, aggressive confidence (perhaps underpinned by some uncertainty). I particularly like the prominence of platform Buffalo trainers much loved by twenty somethings. Each individual in the group is striking a pose.
Contrast this with the uncertainty and whistful looks of the Victorian photo (image to the left). This contrast intrigued me and led me to wonder how Victorian girls would behave in front of the camera if they were in a girl band. That led to Victorian Girl Band I & II.
I have been looking at the art of R B Kitaj a lot recently. He saw drawing as paramount and his skilful draftsmanship shows through in a lot of his paintings. Something which he transferred over from life drawing was the use of charcoal and pastels to create strong black outlines in his paintings. I have tried to use this technique in these two images to make the individuals in the group stand out as well as to delineate each individual member of the group. I have also borrowed Kitaj’s strong colours but translated into my preferred palate which is more on the pastel side of the spectrum (rather than bold primary colours. It’s interesting that my source photo of the girl group shows those strong primary colours as well). I also got inspiration from Kitaj’s varied depiction of faces. Sometimes he drew faces in detail with great accuracy, elegance and fine lines. Other times his faces are primitive and almost crude. Kitaj also used collage in his images which is something a love to include as well.
As another layer of meaning, if we imagine girl groups, given their young age and probable lack of agency, do you think they are exploited or are they set up to exploit their fans? I imagine a bit of both. Children of an impressionable age are susceptible to being exploited to make money for the people who have “discovered” them. I tried to portray that sense of unease and exploitation in both images, particularly in Victorian Girl Band I where I also referenced Picasso’s “Demoiselles D’Avignon” - the ultimate group of exploited women (prostitutes). Picasso just saw a group of women who were uninhibited and who had a primitive energy. What I see is very different, hence the image of the older naked woman on the office chair - someone who has possibly been exploited but has nothing left to give, nothing worth exploiting anymore.
Maskenfreiheit
Maskenfreiheit is the feeling of liberation and anonymity experienced when wearing a mask. Behind a mask it is possible to act differently because people won’t associate the freer expression and more liberated behaviour with the person who is behind the mask. Poets and writers use Maskenfreiheit as a theme to explore identity, social constraints, the power of disguise, and the desire for temporary freedom. On the other hand, masks can represent artifice and duplicity.
In my painting “Maskenfreiheit” I have shown two kids with chubby legs, wearing bright socks drawing attention to their fat legs, and brightly striped costumes. In the background there is a woman walking in a hijab. The children are unselfconscious. They don’t need a mask. They don’t care about self image. Like most younger children, they are comfortable with who they are. By contrast, the woman in the hijab feels more comfortable going into public covered up. I am fascinated and confused by the battle ground that has developed in Europe over hijabs. A woman’s choice to be covered has become a political issue for a number of complicated reasons. This was particularly highlighted by an incident in France a few years ago when a Muslim woman, in line with her culture, who was wearing a modest swimming costume and leggings on the beach in Cannes, was accosted by angry police officers who fined her. Local people found her costume offensive and counter cultural. The politician who promoted the legislation imposing the fines viewed “burkinis” as a symbol of Islamic extremism which were not respectful of the good morals and secularism upon which the French state was founded. All right, since the Revolution, France has had a particular approach to religion and the state but this just seemed ridiculous. Wearing the burkini gave this woman a sense of freedom and enabled her to go swimming in the sea. Similarly, many people are suspicious of women in burkhas and some Western feminists vilify the burkha as a symbol of oppression. But being covered up may represent liberation to the women who wear them. Why should someone from a different culture feel entitled to tell these women that they are oppressed by being covered up?
Does make up play a similar role? Tik Tok is littered with posts of women saying they felt so nervous when their new boyfriend saw them for the first time without make up. Will he still like me? Will he think I’m ugly? A survey among women in 2014 revealed that a third of them got up early to refresh make up or put it on before their partner woke up because they couldn’t bear the thought of being seen without it. In that sense is a mask artifice or protection? For me, I long to be like the chubby legged kids in the picture but I’m probably closer to being like the woman in the burkha.
Choice or Predestination?
Think back to the first time someone made the wrong choice. Eve chose to pick the apple from the Tree of Knowledge. As a result, Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden and we are all cast as essentially bad. We are all tainted with original sin and the gates of paradise are forever closed to us in this life. Yet, if God created Man in his own image and designed Man in the way he wanted, how come it was Eve’s fault that she decided to pick the apple. Ultimately, the whole denouement was pre-destined and Adam and Eve were playing a role in the story. Given that this is the case, how can we blame Eve? This is the idea behind the first painting in a series “Banishment from the Garden of Eden”. The painting shows a bright, lush, verdant garden but Adam is shown in despair as he realises it’s all over and they have to leave. Eve is prostrate beside him, next to the apple that caused all the trouble.
The next painting in the series, “The Tree of Knowledge after the Fall”, shows how the Garden of Eden might have been after Man was thrown out of it. It uses lighter, more desaturated colours than the first painting to indicate a peaceful atmosphere and the serenity that descended on the Garden after disputatious, troublesome Man was banished. The animals simply stepped in to fill the space and carried on doing what they had always done.
Another group of people who lack choice or control over their lives are the actors in soap operas. They are given a role, they learn a script and, if the director decides that they are going to be killed off in the next episode, they have to leave the show. My third picture in the series is “Coronation Street Suspects”. It shows two characters from the TV soap down at Wetherfield Police Station waiting to be interviewed on suspicion of abducting a young woman. They are type cast as villains and have to play that role. The are hated by the viewers but they don’t have any choice in the matter. They can’t act outside the script or act out of character. They do what the director tells them to do.
The final picture in the series is “The Sadness of Infanta Maria Theresa”. Using Velazquez’s Las Meninas as a starting point it shows the Infanta Maria who was married off to the Holy Roman Emperor and sent off to Germany. Her father and mother had ultimate control over her life and decided whom she would marry. Imagine how powerless she must have felt and the sadness that would have accompanied her transfer from the Spanish court to Germany. I used an impression of a Staffordshire flat back spaniel to depict her face. This is a sideways nod to the inbreeding among the Habsburg monarchy that led to the famous “Habsburg lip” and extended jawline.
Ultimately, if we take into account the factors the predetermine our actions, we cannot place blame on anyone. If someone commits a crime their choice may be determined by their upbringing, their background, or their lack of guidance in childhood. Ultimately, no one is to blame.
Smug World of Interiors
Interior design magazines are designed to sell products. They often feature smug couples sitting in the midst of their beautifully put-together rooms full of the most expensive and carefully sourced fabrics, furniture and wallpaper as well as bijou objects and paintings. The couples look very self-satisfied as if the interiors they inhabit are a statement about their individuality, their uniqueness. Their real motive may be to create envy whereas the real motive for the magazine is to support advertising, and to sell the services of interior designers and home and garden retailers.
In “Smug World of Interiors” I imagine just such a couple preening themselves in their splendid surroundings, smiling back at us, unaware that a God-like figure is looming above them just about to take a wrecking ball to their project of perfection.
This project started as a collage which included a page cut out of an interior design magazine. The God figure is the opposite of these metropolitan elite types. She comes from the photos created by the artist Richard Billingham - photos of “squalid realism”. Billingham documented his parents in the 1990s showing them without any filter. His father is an alcoholic and his mother is obese. The couple live in squalor. Their lives involve fighting with each other including physical violence on both sides. The photos are completely honest and do not attempt to judge. The interiors are dark, dingy and disordered. The particular image I used as a starting point was a picture of his mother concentrating on a jigsaw puzzle while smoking a fag.
In a way, I wanted to celebrate ordinary people’s interiors, which smug couples from elite circles might scoff at and deride as being in bad taste. They may not feature high-end fabrics and furniture. They may not bow down to Swedish minimalism or be a paean to David Hicks but they are put together with thought and care nonetheless. The knick-nacks are chosen or passed down and loved. The atmosphere is often cosy and fit for purpose. These interiors are the backdrop for daily life rather than a stage set where the owners might be nervous that you could leave a muddy stain on their carpet, knock over their expensive vase or walk past their carefully chosen artworks. One is created without any aim other than comfort. The other is designed with the viewer in mind. One interior might say: “Don’t look at me. Leave me alone.” The other might say: “Look at our impeccable taste. Look at how successful we are. This is what you should be emulating.”
This reminds me of the homes of older people or those who are immobile. They surround themselves with things that bring comfort as well as gadgets that are practical such as walking frames, specially adapted side tables so that they can have everything they need to hand. This type of interior always strikes me as completely honest without any artifice. I much prefer this type of interior to the slightly forbidding idealism of the designers’ interior space. You can see it in their faces. They exude smugness, inviting you to bask in their superior surroundings. You can look but don’t touch.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that people have different tastes and priorities (much of which depends on their budget). The smug couple’s taste isn’t better than Richard Billingham’s parents’. I think this is what the poet Sophie Hannan was trying to say in her poem “Differences”.
Not everyone who wears a hat
Is copying the Queen.
Not everything that’s large and flat
Thinks it’s a movie screen.
If every time I dress in blue
I imitate the sea,
It makes no difference what I do -
Nothing is down to me.
Not every dim, electric light
Would like to be the sun.
A water pistol doesn’t quite
Mimic a loaded gun.
I do my best, I do my worst
With my specific heart -
God and the Devil got there first;
They had an early start.
Tomatoes can be round and red
Yet be distinct from Mars.
Not all the things above my head
Can be described as stars.
The world had better learn what’s what
(if it remotely cares) -
A ladder is a ladder, not
A failed attempt at stairs.
More about me …
Mary Meakin, Artist
Who am I?
I am an artist from an immigrant background working in the UK. I studied History and History of Art at university. My first job was as a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum in the Metalwork and Sculpture departments. I subsequently retrained as a lawyer and worked in a number of large law firms in the City of London in the private client field. I currently work as a web based legal editor developing products for lawyers using AI. Within that timeframe I have oscillated between the more logical, analytical part of my personality and my more imaginative, free-flowing personality. I probably need both sides of my personality to succeed in art. Making art is not simply a chaotic, anything goes process. It is necessary to make decisions all the time, many of which are based on logical steps and the ability to analyse choices. Therefore, although I have swung, over the past 40 years, between thinking I should opt for the more analytical, objective approach to life, and the more creative approach, I have concluded that both are necessary.
I mentioned that I come from an immigrant background. This has proved very important in shaping who I am. I come from an Irish background. Every year we would visit family in Dublin, Cork and Clare. At school, at the height of the IRA bombings, I was viewed with suspicion and as an outsider. Being steeped in the culture of the Catholic Church immediately cast you as someone apart. Being Irish meant that you were stereotyped as stupid, of peasant origin, anti-British and a Papist. On the other hand, when we returned to Ireland in the summer holidays we were seen as the British cousins, slightly stiff, socially awkward, diffident and generally out of place amongst people who valued speech and words over everything. By personality, I am introverted and like to step back from social interactions. This does not mean that I am not interested in people. Far from it. I find other people endlessly fascinating but I just don't want to get too close. I have developed an ability to observe people's behaviour in a slightly objective way but tinged with a great sense of affection and good will. This enables me to compute what's going on and interpret it creatively in my artwork. I am able to analyse and draw out themes from observing what's going on around me. This is the limitless well of source material for my paintings, collage animations, drawings and sketches. If you don't quite belong in a particular culture you tend to notice things that others steeped in that culture might miss.
I invite you to explore my Instagram feed and website:
Instagram: @maryamagnesart
Website: www.art-ideas-insight.com
For enquiries please email me at marymeakin@mac.com
What do I do?
I work in a number of different media symbiotically. I use a sketchbook to develop ideas, draw from life and explore themes through collage. I also create collage animations. I use collage and drawing to try out things that may or may not work when translated onto canvas or board. I have struggled with the two disciplines of drawing and painting. I enjoy drawing from direct observation and, depending on my mood, my drawings might be very accurate (to the point of photographic) or very expressive and loose. I use drawing as a starting point for my paintings and the primacy of drawing is something I truly believe in. However, it is only a starting point. The use of line (charcoal or paint) interacts and bounces off my use of colour in paintings. For me, the use of colour is absolutely crucial to the finished product. It is a bit like the old Renaissance debate between the rival schools of Florence and Venice – which wins out in the end, disegno or colore? Does the value of a painting lie in the idea originating in the artist's mind (the invention), which is explored through drawings made prior to the painting's execution, or in the more lifelike imitation of nature, achieved through colour and the process of painting itself? I'm not sure I've worked that one out yet. A lot of my paintings are based on a strong initial idea from my head worked out through collage and drawing before I even get to the canvas. I don't tend to paint using mimetic, local colours. My colour choice is a free-for-all based on value scales and which colours complement each other. My pictures largely involve the human figure in various settings. The human face presents problems. Do I render it realistically or in an abstract, more expressionist mode? This is crucial because the human face is totemic. If you paint an accurate face it can suck the life out of the rest of the picture. I have concluded that it is often better to abstract faces slightly so that they blend and cohere with the rest of the scene.
Why do I do it?
I have always made paintings and drawings. I have also created prints, sculpture and ceramics. Using your hands to produce something original and which includes a little bit of your self has always been an essential activity. Although I have created artwork which pleases the crowds, ultimately I prefer to paint for myself, to use it as a tool to express my thought processes and reveal a little bit about who I am and what I think. I find this terrifying and exhilerating in turns. I don't really mind if other people don’t read my paintings correctly or misunderstand what I'm trying to convey. I actually welcome different interpretations. Any interpretation is valid. In fact, in some cases, viewers have noticed something in my work which is very true but I didn't spot. I find this particularly intriguing as it reinforces my belief in the intelligence and power of all individuals whether they are educated, "knowledgeable" or not.
Some of the themes I have explored recently are:
Nostalgia through objects.
People's interiors and gadgets and how they use them to exert their superiority over others.
The Annunciation transported to the modern world.
People hiding secrets in out of the way places.
Lack of agency coupled with blame – the Scapegoat.
“Maskenfrieheit” – the use of masks and disguises to gain autonomy and freedom.
Stop motion + Collage = your most bizarre thoughts visualised.
I love the idea of juxtaposing things that really don’t go together to see what happens. Stop motion video using Dragonframe and a camera on a tripod enables you to do just that. The outcome is sometimes funny (as in humourous) and sometimes just funny (as in bizarre or strange). These videos were produced quite some time ago so the quality is not great but I hope to do more of this type of work soon.