The Shape I Know
About the work
The Shape I Know began with the raised shoulder and the way it remains present in my perception of my own body. The distortion is deliberate. The shoulder sits too high, the proportions shift and the edge of the body breaks apart because I am not trying to describe anatomy accurately. I am painting the body as it has come to exist in my own perception.
The close crop intensifies that sense of bodily awareness. The figure presses against the edge of the canvas, while plaster gathers around the shoulder and along areas that feel strained, displaced or difficult to ignore. Elsewhere, colour moves more freely across the surface, allowing the body to remain recognisable without becoming anatomically fixed.
Pink, ochre, blue and green do not describe flesh so much as sensation. They move across the figure as a way of marking where the body feels heightened, altered or somehow out of alignment.
What interests me is the gap between what others may see and what can feel continually present from within. The painting sits within that discrepancy, where sensation begins to reshape the image we hold of ourselves.
Artwork details
2026
Acrylic and plaster on canvas
30 × 30 cm