ABOUT

I spent a lot of time playing ‘Call of Duty” growing up. The video game provided a welcome escape from the real world. Part of its allure was completing challenges in order to unlock desirable camouflage wraps for your weapons. For example, in the game ‘Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2’, you are required to execute 250 headshots to unlock the much-desired ‘Fall camouflage’. At the expense of my school work, I often rose to such challenges. Contrastingly, in the real world, I was sensitive and prone to going bright red at the sign of mildly uncomfortable social situations.

All through school, I was stubborn in my belief that social media was bad. Deep down, my real reason for not using it until my 20s was that I was fearful of any sort of self-expression. Despite this, my online presence through video games was enough to blend in with the ‘cool crowd’ as my skill sets with a sniper rifle were well respected by my fellow video gamers in school (there were a lot of them). I was helped further in that on various occasions, I was spared from bullying as I played football out of school with some of the year aboves. I will add that this didn’t always save me.

In my work, I aim to create authentically. I don’t want it to be much more complicated than that. Themes of masculinity and deception are my focus, and I feel they are well represented in my stubbornness to work exclusively in painting camouflage with acrylic paints. It’s a nice thought, although in truth I often wonder whether my desire for authenticity holds me back. Perhaps if I developed a more formidable mask (camouflage sounded a bit cringe), I’d be better equipped to sell myself. Nevertheless, I persist in the hopes that my reluctance to develop such a disguise is my biggest selling point.