CROSSROADS

Degree Show (Liverpool Hope University, Creative Campus, June 2025)

This body of work grew from an ongoing enquiry into the tactile and transformative nature of paint. Through abstraction, I tested relationships between material, colour, process and meaning, returning to paint’s physical behaviour — its resistance, unpredictability, and the way it keeps re-ordering decisions. The paintings were built through repetition and revision: scraping back, rebuilding, adjusting, and stopping only when the work held.

For the degree show, installation became part of the work’s structure. A walkway cut through the space, and the hang resolved as a kind of symphony on one side and a fugue on the other: two distinct registers held in parallel. The placement made visible a shift in my studio language across the year — earlier works carrying more density and activity, and later works becoming less busy, more controlled, and more considered in colour and pacing.

It was a risk to show both states of the work together, but that tension mattered. The installation allowed the viewer to experience the transition rather than being told about it: one side holding accumulation and intensity, the other moving toward restraint and clarity. The aim was for the space to do some of the work — distance, sequence and rhythm — so that the paintings could be encountered over time rather than all at once.