Uchi (home)

Uchi (Japanese for home), arose out of a yearning to create a portrait of home. A picture of its beauty and imperfections, one of feelings, colours, seasons, light and food. I have wanted to portray my multiple homes through the residue of the life they contain.

My eye is drawn to things that are often ignored or overlooked. A weed growing through the pavement, the way pegs shimmer in the light on a drying frame. In this body of work, I portray the homes behind the details they are so intimately involved with, seeking to capture a fragment of what remains when the person to whom they relate has gone.

The act of ‘note-taking’ is where my studio practice begins. It is a continual process of collecting different marks, colours and textures that populate my everyday life. The marks and colours I use in my paintings are borrowed; I take them, document them, and displace them into a piece of work. They originate from simple acts throughout every day – taking the children to school, an excursion to the playground, watching the light pass through the leaves as I walk home from the market, the endless scuff marks on an old wall, the colour of a flowering jacaranda against the bright blue sky. I’m continually seeking to observe and capture the rhythm of a season and the geography I inhabit.

Through my work, I am trying to make sense of my movement, in the larger sense, of physical displacement from loved ones and communities to my own interactions with the immediate geography.