University of Brighton fine Art (Painting) submission

My three core values are creativity, beauty and play. When the Nintendo game, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild came out, I was taken aback by the beauty of the game and enjoyed disappearing into Hyrule as a meditative exercise. Playing it also improved my problem-solving skills, taught me patience and encouraged me to stop occasionally and admire what a creative feat it was.

The dragon depicted here is actually from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Breath of the Wild‘s sequel. The dragon is Princess Zelda who has turned herself into a dragon so she can become immortal and save the protagonist, Link, in the future.

This painting is a combination of acrylics, garden paint and exterior varnish on an 8×4′ piece of marine plywood (used in housing because of its waterproof and durable quality. It’s also a great surface on which to paint).

It is designed to be hung outside and to be taken with me when I move. The idea of the mobile mural stemmed from both the ephemeral nature of Brighton’s street art and, conversely, the signature pieces of known street artists that appear all over the city, as if they’re following you.

For the imagery of the painting, I was inspired by the video game itself and by various digital artists online (examples one, two, three). It’s by far the biggest picture I’ve painted and took around four months to complete.

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When I moved to Brighton, I wanted to turn my bedroom into something that reminded me of the sea and reflected my love of sci-fi, fantasy and vintage pin-up.

Mermaid (right): Back in 2013ish, I went to the Back to the Future Secret Cinema, where I picked up a themed ‘newspaper‘ that includes an advert for the ‘Enchantment Under the Sea’ dance, which features in the film (my newspaper can be seen the bottom right photo, in the picture frame). This was my initial inspiration for this image, as I imagined who might be reading it and fancy going to the dance.

My other inspiration was pin-up artist, Gil Elvgen, who would have been at the height of his career in 1955, when the fictional dance was set. Using acrylics I painted a mural of a mermaid (based on Elvgren’s Hold Everything, Skirting the Issue) holding aforesaid newspaper, and who is considering going to the ‘Enchantment Under the Sea’ dance.

Octopus (below): Adding to the ‘Enchantment Under the Sea’ theme, I wanted to depict an octopus peeking out over the mirror, as if giving you advice over what to wear to the dance. This didn’t quite work out as planned. The turquoise was too harsh and flat, and I couldn’t produce the playfulness I wanted – he looks a little menacing!

As you can see from the photo of the whole room (bottom right), I recreated the ‘Under the Sea’ dance with a lot of decorations and accessories, even a seashell bed. Unfortunately, it’s a dark room and I don’t have a professional camera so some of the photos aren’t as vibrant as they were in real life.

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I was brought up with dogs and I couldn’t imagine my life without them. I’m also autistic and my dogs are my emotional support animals, meaning they ground me and keep my nervous system in check.

Over the years I have recreated the two dogs I’ve owned as an adult in a variety of media, each containing symbolism of what they mean to me.

Clarence (right) is first depicted in watercolours, waiting by the window with his best friend, Daisy, for her dog mum to come home. The next picture of Clarence is acrylics on wood, which I painted after he suddenly passed away. He loved a stick and he always looked bored, so I wanted to recreate ‘bored Clarence’ on his favourite ‘medium’. I played about with doing a Mexican Day of the Dead style Clarence (pen sketch, bottom right), but I couldn’t capture his essence.

Ada (below) is ceramic paint on a plate and is based on my favourite Brighton graffiti artist, Cassette Lord’s Cat-sette (my photo here). I struggled with loneliness when I moved to Brighton, but going on solo graffiti walks was one of my first stepping stones to feeling connected to the city. For this piece, I hadn’t used ceramic paint before and was disappointed that the bubbles featured in the pre-kiln photo (below, bottom photo) got lost, and that the blue darkened, with the brushstrokes becoming more visible. I prefer the pre-kiln painting.

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She-Ra is a childhood hero of mine and to create a ‘painting’ that I wore was to embody and become her. Whilst this isn’t a ‘painting’ per se, my post-apocalyptic She-Ra costume (inspired by the likes of Xena, Warrior Princess) was very much an experiment in using different kinds of paint and painting methods to create a range of effects on a variety of surfaces.

Sword: I found a square piece of floor foam dumped out onto the road, which I carved into a sword shape. I then, using various YouTube videos (e.g. Axceleration), taught myself spray-painting and I used black shoe polish and other multimedia (such as a foam egg, foil and sticky gems) to make my sword look not only metallic, but old and battered.

Crop top/ wrist guards: I repeated this process for the top, which was made of craft foam that I attached to an old bra, so that it would fit when I put it on. The wrist guards I spraypainted gold.

Skirt: For the warrior skirt, I wrapped faux leather around long pieces of card and gave them the same spray paint/ shoe polish treatment. I attached them to a belt that I wore over a pair of white shorts, which were hand rinsed in diluted black acrylic paint.

I wore this outfit to London ComicCon in 2018, and it was easily the best and most fun costume I’ve made to date.