The beginnings of a new collection

There’s a special kind of excitement that comes from building a body of work from the ground up — where possibilities are endless and nothing is set in stone until you say it is. However with that also comes doubt and anxiety of never finding what you truly want.

For the past six months, I’ve been quietly working away – a collection with no name yet no strict roadmap and dedicated timeframe. I’m just letting it unfold naturally. Each piece follows my original principles: tap into global topics that pain me the most. That means a wide‑angled look at the issues that surround us – from AI and digital culture to the rise of the populist politics, nationalism, misogyny, hate‑driven rhetoric, racism, and more. At its core, the collection examines belief systems, what it means to be human and lack of humanity, and how we define truth in an age shaped by misinformation and coercion.

Make Mother Proud

The newest piece — a 2×1 metre canvas called Make Mother Proud. At first glance, it has this semi‑religious vibe: iconic, reverent, almost comforting. But like much of my work, once you scratch past the surface you start to realise it has a darker side. 

At the centre is a the mother figure representing: biological, spiritual, and metaphorical (as in nature itself). She’s nature, morality, expectation, judgement — all at once. To the left and right are two sets of children; one showing compassion for each other and on the other side an assertion of strength, hostility and dominance.

Threaded in the background of the imagery is a subtle line graph charting the relationship between personal wealth and altruism plotting variations between what you have versus what you’re willing to give — all framed as things that might “make your mother proud.” 

It’s a simple idea on the surface, but it’s quite loaded. The piece pokes at whether "good" and "bad" are ever as clean as we pretend, and how those definitions get shaped by power, privilege, and the stories we inherit.

Other work

Other pieces in progress keep digging into that same moral tension and cultural contradiction.

An Item for Good or Evil – painted mallets that look like crucifixes, objects that flip between arbitrary of left vs right (or up vs down), tool and weapon, and symbol and threat. As the title suggests is religion inherently good and moral righteousness or can it be a tool or weapon for evil to disguise itself.

The Suitcase Sculpture — a structure built from painted suitcases, exploring immigration, migration, and the baggage we all carry, whether literal or inherited.

These works feel like artefacts from a world that mirrors ours but strips away the polite veneer. They ask us to look directly at the systems we’re part of — whether we chose them or not.

There's no exhibition scheduled yet, but a few pieces are already up in the gallery, and I’m always happy to show the others to anyone curious enough to ask.

Why This First Glance Matters

For me, this stage matters because it’s the most honest part. I’m not shaping a collection to match a theme; I’m using the collection to question it. I know it may never be commercially viable, and I decided early on not to let that stop me.

The work is messy. It often dead‑ends. The bin fills quickly. But inside that tension, there’s beauty and clarity – and the reminder that art can still voice the questions we’re not always brave enough to say.

Two collections from one

I’ve started developing a series of masked portraits—an extension of this collection that feels like a natural step forward, or possibly a softer fallback if the main collection proves too deep to navigate.

The masks do everything at once: obscure, protect, reveal, distort. They speak to identity in a time when truth is debated, personas are curated, and anonymity can be both shelter and weapon. As the style evolves, it keeps generating a conversation between what’s visible and what’s hidden, the individual and the system around them.