Xavier's Lost Soul

Framed view of Xavier’s Lost Soul, an abstract figurative painting with fragmented figures in layered blue, yellow, orange and white.
  • Close-up of Xavier’s Lost Soul showing layered blue, yellow and white marks surrounding a fragmented central figure

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  • Textured detail of Xavier’s Lost Soul showing a pale figure emerging through scratched layers of blue, ochre and orange paint.

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About the work

Xavier’s Lost Soul is one of the paintings I most clearly recognise as a self-portrait, although it is not a physical likeness. The figures reflect my emotional state at the time: fractured, exposed and struggling to contain what I was carrying.

The central figure appears suspended within the painting, surrounded by smaller bodies that bend, strain and seem to expel something from themselves. Some appear to be vomiting or defecating a bile-like substance. I did not want to disguise the ugliness of these forms. They suggest a body overwhelmed—unable to absorb any more and attempting to purge what has become painful or toxic.


None of the figures was planned in advance. They emerged as I layered, scraped and reworked the surface, gradually finding bodies within the accumulated colour and marks. I allowed them to remain awkward and incomplete because resolving them into more conventional figures would have diminished their vulnerability. Although there are several bodies, I see them less as separate people than as different states of the same divided self.


Forms appear and disappear across the painting, caught between the blue, yellow, orange and white layers. Some remain exposed while others are partly buried. That movement between concealment and exposure reflects how distress can become embedded within us: pushed beneath the surface, altered over time, yet still capable of forcing its way back into view.


For me, it holds what remains of a period when much of what I felt could not be expressed directly. Looking at it now, I see figures that are lost and broken, but also engaged in the painful act of releasing what they can no longer contain.


Artwork details
2022
Acrylic on canvas
100 × 80 cm framed

Exhibited at the Chianciano Biennale, Italy, 2022, where it received an award


Availability on request →