My practice of bright acrylic paintings display a regression to behaviours and archetypes from childhood as a means of escape from the present. They are informed by an interest in transactional analysis, wherein an individual’s state of ego can become childlike in some scenarios of communication. This has translated in the work through an exploration of the sense of ambivalence that reverting back to past comforts at a later stage of life creates.

The paintings are scattered with allusions to movies and stories, in particular The Wizard of Oz (1939). The movie is utilised in the work as a means of tying reality to another more imaginative viewpoint, as seen in the movie itself. The ‘unreliable narrator’, found in literature, is also of influence to the work. This is when the story is told from an individual who cannot guarantee credibility to the reader, and the truth is coloured by their own experience and perception.