Out of My Hands...

Dying to Live was nine months in the making, weirdly enough the same length of time as a pregnancy, and the birth of this child was faster than I ever thought possible.

For nine months, I’ve been fully involved with every single piece of this work!

I threw myself into backdrop ageing, painting, feather sticking, wing adjusting, glove-finger painting, and even hired my mother to create a prop.

I was privileged to have models trust me enough to be buried, wear a straitjacket and a blindfold with a cage over their head, and awkwardly hug a life-size skeleton in a small space to get the shot, all because I can’t stand AI!

I took on a whole new editing style I knew NOTHING about and took composition to a whole other level!

I challenged myself through self-portraiture, which revealed a whole new layer, not just within my work, but within my own soul.

I was the lighting assistant, creative director, editor, prop assistant, photography assistant and photographer.

There were hours spent poring over custom presets, asking, “Is that in the right place?”, directing, “Just a few more inches to the left,” and experiencing plenty of, “Yep, this sounds amazing, but how the fuck do I actually do it?”

I lived through this work in all its stages: the beginning, the uncertainty, all the overthinking, the changes in direction, the lighting practices and the moments when something I wasn’t even expecting just fell into place.

I even became the literal embodiment of my own collection’s concept: exploring the cycles of death and rebirth that shape the journey of the soul.

And suddenly, after months of controlling basically everything, from its creation to the final masterpieces, my collection is now at the mercy of its audience.

There’s a strange moment in the life of an artwork when it stops belonging entirely to the artist.

As my collection is currently on exhibition, there’s a nervous excitement in my system. The work has left the familiar surroundings of my studio and the vulnerability of the Photoshop screen, entering a space where people can encounter it for the first time.

After all the control I’ve had, I’ve realised just how many things I don’t have control over: how other people will interpret the collection, whether people will get it, what they’ll notice first, which work will become the favourite (yes, I had one), whether they’ll view it in order and whether anyone will read that fucking artist statement!

We can tell a powerful story, but how people read the narrative, skip chapters or choose to pick it up in the first place is entirely their experience.

My collection is now, quite literally, out of my hands.