Collection: The Library of Whispers and Progress

In this series of artworks, I’m creating imaginative and unique coloured pencil drawings. I love the way pencils help me create sharp, vibrant and expressive images. I'm drawn to the detail that can be achieved with Polychromos. My work is inspired by my personal experience and emotions.

For this series, I started exploring artificial intelligence and I embraced it as a very helpful tool for inspiration and visualisation, I find it incredibly useful for reference, for example, if I need to reference an eye or a glass it’s relatively easy for me to achieve but it is ultimately up to me to create my own ideas and artwork, what happens after that is between me and the pencils. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of digital art.

The first piece ‘Face / Book’ is a portrait of a fictitious face, the skin is made from paper, set between old leather-bound books. It’s part of this series called ‘Library of Whispers and Progress’. I love drawing paper and the fine detail of old books, the folds of the paper, the texture of the books, and the subtle shading on the antiquarian bindings.

The paper face of ‘Face / Book’ represents many things to me.. partly it symbolises a person's alter ego, not real or authentic, a hidden face behind social media. My initial idea came from transformation, the fragility of the human face not only aesthetically as we age, but emotionally. Paper is a delicate material that can easily be torn or damaged, in the same way our emotions and identities can be easily hurt, this culminates in our changing expressions even our personalities. At the same time paper can be recycled meaning there’s a potential for change.

On completion of ‘Face / Book’ someone said “The eyes are mesmerising” someone else said “Scary” most comments focused on the quality of the detail that makes the piece what it is.. Whether critics like it or not ‘Face /Book’ represents many things to me and I felt free to explore my creativity. Immediately after ‘Face / Book’ I completed a simple piece called ‘Book Light’ a relatively simple drawing.

Then I moved on to ‘A Literary Eye’ quite an emotional piece to me but at the same time attracted an interesting response. The book represents the vast amount of information that is available to us, but the eye reminds us that we must be careful about what we believe and how we use the knowledge that we have.

The still life painting "The Hidden Observer" is a surreal piece that depicts objects that don’t move with a curious peeping eye under an open book. This juxtaposition creates a sense of mystery and intrigue. For me, the painting represents a world where we are constantly under surveillance, both by others and by ourselves. Our every move is scrutinised and our words analysed, the eye is curious, suggesting that there is a deeper meaning to our existence, something beyond the mundane and the everyday.