Crit at Castro Projects: Tuesday 7th November 2023

In my Rome studio, I was visited by Angelica Bollettinari, Executive Manager and Public Program Coordinator of CASTRO Projects: an experimental artists’ learning program in Rome. I was subsequently invited to take one the paintings made during the residency to a group critique in their Trastevere space. The evening was well attended by a mix of local, national and international artists –some of whom were connected to the various foreign academies – my work was discussed in considerable depth, helping me to think through the body of work and calculate next steps: abstracting the imagery, upping the personal and creating a more open work with a higher-degree of ambiguity.

Coming away from the crit and processing the feedback, I spent the next few weeks developing a range of motifs which continued to emerge not from predictable sources but instead from my direct experiences of life in Rome and at the British School, which I refined into ever simpler designs by limiting myself using a grid of 5 x 5 squares to create what appeared to be highly pixelated images.