Lately, I feel that I finally understand why I have been cutting my paintings into equal squares.
What started as an intuitive act now reveals itself as a deliberate process of fragmentation and reconstruction. By cutting earlier works into small units, I interrupt their original narrative. The image is no longer fixed — it becomes material. Something that can be reorganised, rethought, and carried forward.
The grid brings a sense of order. It is almost archival — a way of holding fragments in a system. At the same time, it contrasts with the rupture created by cutting. There is always a tension between control and disruption.
Sewing these fragments onto burlap becomes a way of working through this tension. It is not about restoring what was, but about forming something new. The surface becomes layered, where traces of past works remain visible but exist in a different structure.
Burlap itself feels important. It carries associations of preservation, transport, and ritual wrapping. It holds memory, but in a raw and physical way.
Now, as I begin to think about my final PhD exhibition, I see this process more clearly. The work is not just about image-making — it is about constructing a material language.
The composition I am developing centers on a dragon, surrounded by four directional forces. This introduces another layer — a cosmological structure. There is a sense of orientation, balance, and protection, but also movement and transformation.
I am also starting to introduce a wooden bell into the work. This shifts something. The piece is no longer only visual — it suggests activation. The possibility of sound, of being awakened.
If I think about it now, the work begins to hold:
– fragments of the past
– a system of order
– a central force
– and a sense of time
It feels like everything is slowly coming together — not as a fixed image, but as a living structure.
And maybe this is what I am really working toward for the final exhibition:
not a series of objects, but a space where memory, material, and movement exist together.
