Do Not Determine me to a Decaying Garden

Product description

This painting discusses the needs we have, both animalistic and aesthetic, and our lack of control we have over these desires. Painted during a time when most of the UK was experiencing extreme heat and drought, the grass browned, the flowers wilted, the fields laid empty or became ablaze.

The title is at once an angry retaliation to the natural world and refusing to accept our need to adapt, a commentary on our dependability on the landscape and the state it can causes us when this relationship doesn't work out our way, and a plea to someone abstract figure or God for survival. In the barest of words, this painting pushes between not wanting to be tied down by exterior factors while admitting to our individual limitations. After this Summer, the artwork comments on our secret wonderings about whether this planet can sustain us and if not, where is home if we can no longer

• First Class Honours in Fine Art with Contemporary Cultural Theory, University of Leeds, 2023-2026