I was taking a nice warm bath about two weeks ago and decided to use this cute pink heart-shaped bath bomb my mom got me. As it dissolved into the water I noticed all the fizzy holes it created, and it reminded me of the trypophobic imagery I focussed on in my painting Within, Without. Recently I’ve been in the habit of taking pictures of anything I find mildly visually interesting, so that’s what I did. Shortly after I managed to snag a decently priced canvas and figured I’d give the picture a crack at a painting.

I love exploring texture in my art. In combining and contrasting them, you can create really visceral feelings in a viewer. These can be feelings of distrust, for example, when seeing another texture reflected in a different medium (See artist Bill Braun’s work). Currently, I am trying to learn how to evoke discomfort of this nature in my viewers. I decided that the contrast between the flesh of my hand and the chemical pink dissolving bath bomb could potentially capture that.

I’ve considered a few different methods of abstraction. The painting has definitely gone through some cheeky stages where I considered exclusively rendering the index and middle fingers alongside the bath bomb and just colour blocking the rest. I’ve also considered extending the corroded texture of the bath bomb into the hand and blending them together, but figured it might be a little unnecessarily gross and time-consuming for a painting I’d like to sell.

Right now, however, I’m leaning towards fully rendering the hand and bath bomb, and considering blending the suds in a subtly unnatural way. I’ve felt quite inspired by surrealism, particularly by Frida Kahlo’s variety, but I haven’t quite gotten to fully exploring it. Fleshy, highly rendered hands tend to remind me of Christian influences on art, so pulling that imagery into a painting about self-love adds a little depth. “My body is a temple and I shall worship it how I please” or whatever that tumblr post said. The surrealism would come in the form of maintaining a relatively flat background, giving a lot of visual weight to the hand.

That’s all for now.

PS: Damn, I’m heartbroken about how the Stanley Cup final played out. But, considering how many Canadian players are on American teams, did the cup ever really leave Canada?

I just wrote a long entry about attending the Edmonton Oilers vs. Dallas Stars Western Conference Final game yesterday, and how the whole thing is indicative of Edmonton's identity as a city with a glorious past. It was an insanely long and well written entry, until the page refreshed and deleted the whole thing :D
Whatever, I guess. I'll wait to see the outcome of finals.

Until then, have a single adventure image.

Thank you for visiting my website!

I intend to use this page to blog about my life and art making process. Sharing the process of creation is something I love to see from artists, and I find it helps to connect with the work on a deeper level. Having a website allows me to separate that from my main portfolio.
I've had a lot of fun creating this website, although I never realized how infrequently I take pictures of and post about my work. A large part of that has been my dislike for Instagram's chronological format. The pressure for a cohesive Instagram page often discouraged me from expanding my horizons in mediums. Ink is currently my favourite medium, but that tends to clash on a grid with oil paintings.
The experience is similar in subject manner - I did my time with hyperrealistic colour pencil eye drawings to appeal to the algorithm. That didn't exactly fit in next to ink abstractions.

I'll leave it there for now, blogging is something I'll need to get the hang of. I hope you enjoy :)