I have a long-standing interest in overlooked objects and the moments that hold them. I love wry humour, and together this inquiry has birthed the six oil paintings that make up Petite Salon. By isolating these moments, we can elevate the ordinary as something worth noticing.

My work connects to the British Kitchen Sink movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s, which depicted domestic life with realism and social awareness. Jumping us to the current day, domestic spaces still hold an intimacy where routine gestures are deeply personal and universally understood, common to our humanity. Like those painters, I focus on the familiar to reveal its quiet significance and offer a soft moment of connection.

These six paintings are still life by genre, interrupting the busyness of their routine just out of frame. The use of perspective in each painting is intentionally exaggerated or odd, creating a surreal, dreamlike quality as we often move through domestic tasks on autopilot.  

My painting process employs an imprimatura technique, a layer of coloured underpainting in bright yellow, which adds warmth or intensity to the final, more opaque layers above. I use purples as contrast, removing the white canvas distraction, and find that other visual interest areas can pop through by starting with this base colour.

This series is part of a broader framework as I move to start a Master of Contemporary Art at Melbourne University this year. I will look to interrogate how seemingly unremarkable objects and domestic routines can contain our internal blueprint of ‘self’, while also holding a mirror up to ourselves as we seek external validation.