STUDIO DIARIES, 5th September 2025.
I am currently preparing for The Other Art Fair, which I’m doing 9-12 October (Truman Brewery). I have a very ambitious schedule, as I want to finish 4 paintings (most of them are between 40-80% done!). I have just started the last one, I think I’ll have time to complete before the fair.
The painting is based on the idea of the sphinx, from Greek mythology. Chat GPT says the following about the sphinx:
In Greek mythology, the Sphinx was a fearsome creature with the head of a woman, the body of a lion, and the wings of a bird. She is most famous for her role in the story of Oedipus. The Sphinx terrorized the city of Thebes by posing a deadly riddle to travelers: those who could not answer were devoured. Oedipus solved her riddle, causing the Sphinx to destroy herself. Symbolically, the Sphinx represents mystery, fate, and the danger of unsolved knowledge, embodying the blending of wisdom and destruction.
Currently, with a lot of the work I am creating, I am exploring themes around mental health and one’s “inner world”. I have for a long time wanted to go back into exploring figurative works, inspired by storytelling, mythology, fairytales and general larger than life lore. SO for this painting, I am using the image/symbol of the sphinx to symbolise meeting a road block, and how mental health can often be a big "riddle". How it can devour you if you don't figure it out.
For this one I have spray painted the background, and started on the main figurative painting with oil paints.
The sphinx poses a famous riddle to the travellers: What has 4 legs in the morning, 2 in the afternoon and 3 in the evening?
I spray painted this riddle several times on the background, amongst creating texture by scraping the paint and drawing doodles. Some places, words or numbers shine through; it is hard to read the whole riddle in one go. What I like about this process is that it becomes like a time lapse; I like the idea that many travellers have come to this place before. Many people have encountered this riddle. Grappled with the same problems.
This week I started on the face of the woman, and it’s an interesting one - I haven't really used oil paints in this way before. I chose the represent the head as a statue, mainly to keep the connotations to that of Greek mythology, as well as to give the creature a more epic and classical look.
I accidentally started painting it with the same technique I used with the elephant painting (or very similar). And now, I love how you can see the background shine through! This wasn’t how I originally imagined it to look at all - and it was a very exciting discovery. I think it’s going to be super interesting and create a really nice dynamic with the paint being more loose and more abstract in other places in the painting.
Which is obviously to be continued!