Here We Can Be Free explores themes of intimacy, mortality, vulnerability, and desire in female relationships. These relationships are situated in the natural environment of the area in which I live and work. This is an acknowledgement of the fact that as humans, our relationship with the natural environment is unavoidable and complicated. It is also an acceptance that our identities are shaped, influenced, celebrated and criticized within societal constructs; nature is indifferent, without prejudice or preference.
The abstracted and simplified outdoor background indicates that while the figures might be secluded, they remain visible, private but not hidden. Not cloistered in the studio, or in some nameless space, instead they exist in the public-private realm of the natural environment; an expression of the layered, complex spaces between outward presentation and inner life.
In Here We Can Be Free, the viewer is, at times, almost a voyeur, stumbling upon an intimate scene where their presence is unnoticed. Skin is rendered unnaturally smooth, drenched in sensual, saturated colour and hazy tones. The level of intimacy of the inner world and its outer depiction have an inverse relationship; the lessening of one allows for greater freedom in the other.