Why I Paint the Things We Think We’ve Forgotten
There are moments in my life that feel like they’ve slipped between the cracks - not gone, exactly, but softened, muted, waiting for something to bring them back into focus. I’ve spent years trying to hold onto memories that feel like they’re dissolving at the edges, especially the ones connected to my mum. It’s been over two decades since she passed, and sometimes the panic of forgetting her - her voice, her energy, the way she moved through a room - sits just beneath my ribs.
People assume my work is playful because it’s full of 90s colour: bright toys, plastic gadgets, cartoon characters that feel like childhood jingles you can’t quite place. But for me, those objects are anchors. They’re the things I remember clearly, even when people aren’t always easy to recall.
I paint them because they’re reliable.
They don’t fade.
They wait for me.
Sometimes I’ll be sketching a Tamagotchi or a stack of VHS tapes, and out of nowhere, something small but powerful comes back - a smell from our old house, a TV show my mum used to let me watch, the way a certain toy felt in my hand. It’s never the “big moments” that return. It’s the tiny, ordinary ones. The ones you don’t realise matter until you’re trying to hold onto them with both hands.
Painting has become a way for me to coax those memories out. It’s like turning a dial on an old radio, searching for a signal. One colour leads to a feeling, one shape leads to a fragment of a day, and suddenly I’m closer to her than I expected to be.
This is why I paint the things we think we’ve forgotten:
because sometimes an object can remember what we can’t.
My canvases aren’t time machines, they’re invitations. A chance to step back into a moment I thought was gone. A way of stitching myself to a past that shaped me, even as it tries to slip away.
And maybe that’s the quiet truth behind all of my nostalgia:
I’m not painting the 90s.
I’m painting the memories I’m afraid to lose.
Every painting I create, every 90s toy or colourful cassette brought to life on canvas, carries a fragment of these memories - little pieces of moments I’m determined not to forget. They’re my way of holding onto the past, of honouring the people and times that shaped me. If you’d like to see the collection born from these quiet recollections, you can explore my latest works in the shop - each piece a small, tangible memory waiting to be part of someone else’s story.