Artist Statement

I began painting as a way to process a profound, life-changing experience. This event put me into a state of "ontological shock" - being forced to drastically question and reconstruct my view of reality. This dramatic transformation was brought about by an encounter with what some name "non-duality", "ego dissolution", or rather more dramatically, "Ego death". In this state, one experiences a complete loss of identification with their historical or conceptual self, identifying instead with the entire universe, all of reality, God, or any other word that attempts to point towards something unfathomably immense. This kind of experience, while rare, is being increasingly documented by people from all walks of life. It's so strange and meaningful that many see it as mystical, though people from scientific backgrounds have also started to speak openly about their own encounters with ego death, such as neuroscientist Sam Harris, neuroanatomist Jill Bolte-Taylor, and author Michael Pollan (How to Change Your Mind). While interpretations of this strange event differ, there's one thing it clarifies with certainty: our knowledge of the mind barely scrapes the surface.

This is how my art practice came to be about this most important yet mysterious thing: consciousness. That is, phenomenology. Subjective experience. The fact that it feels like something to be you. Without consciousness, not a single aspect of human experience matters at all. Love could not be felt, memories could not be recalled, and meaning could not be searched for. Consciousness is what human life is all about - it is the medium in which all experience occurs.

Despite its central role in human life and thousands of years of study, consciousness remains one of the most profound mysteries faced by philosophers and scientists today. Modern cognitive science has demonstrated an intimate relationship between the physical brain and subjective experience: we understand that physical damage to the brain can alter an individual's personality, electrical stimulation can produce hallucinatory sensations, and pharmaceuticals can be taken to influence our emotions and our thoughts. It’s clear that the chemistry and structure of the brain effect our subjective states. But knowing this doesn't solve the central mystery. Why should the activity of physical, unconscious chemicals occurring inside a physical, unconscious piece of meat cause a non-physical, mental experience? Computers are exceedingly capable of recalling a memory, navigating an environment, and making choices after analysing data, yet consciousness seems unrequired in their case. There is no consensus as to what it is, why it evolved, and what its relationship to physical matter is. 

There are two ways of exploring consciousness: objectively (the scientific method), and subjectively (self-enquiry). My painting practice has become an essential tool in my own form of self-enquiry. All paintings are unplanned, unmeasured, and with minimal thought before the work starts. Rather, each work emerges, stroke by stroke. While producing the work, I enter a meditative-like state in which thoughts slow down and can be examined or stopped altogether. My conscious and unconscious minds engage in a strange sort of dance, and the brushstrokes on the page chronicle this dance. Where my attention wavers, you see it in more clumsy brushwork or patterns repeated asymmetrically. When I achieve "flow", the selfless state where time doesn't exist, you see an unstrained, flee-flowing sort of precise beauty.

The process of creation is fascinating because it seems to demand a certain "letting go". If I become focused on not ruining the artwork, I’ll ruin it. If I become self-conscious about the quality of the work, I'll ruin it. If I start thinking about the past or the future, I'll ruin it. This letting-go produces a sense of otherness to the process. When painting, I ask myself: Am I doing this, or is this happening to me? The feeling upon viewing a completed work is usually, "Where did this come from?" or "Why did I do this?", with no ready-made answer appearing to me, just a challenge to explore more deeply.