These works began in late 2023 when I made journeys on the District Line and did quick drawings of seated figures, distorting them through speed of drawing. Tube travellers became moon-eyed with stick arms or hands like hooks and I liked the way they seemed rickety, outlandish or menacing. Their eccentric shapes, gestures and expressions also reminded me of the pathos, ghostliness or grotesqueness of figures in different kinds of mythological underworld. And these qualities became more noticeable in my subsequent work on cardboard and canvas. My oil sticks, acrylic, pastel and charcoal attacked the figures through intrusive lines, poured paint and flung blots so that human structure and identity began to collapse. My spoiling and messing indicated my subjects’ fragility with the struggle between a figure trying to exist and materials which were trying to undo it.
