The second adaptation of my year long studio project has centred around the fine line between comfort and discomfort, exploring the uncanny and the surreal Freudian concept of the “unheimlich”. By using a very personal narrative by curating family photographs and then transforming them by painting them in oils onto found jewellery and silverware pieces as a reference to the history of mourning jewellery. Some pieces are completed in oils using small brush strokes and many semi opaque layers, others are simply primed with white gesso and then varnished to create a harsh and uncomfortable juxtaposition.

Small elements are combined on top of an antique dressing table with a matching vintage rug, combined with a mollusk shell pink wall, (a perfect colour match to the velvet interiors of the jewellery boxes) to help to set dress the environment and to create a surreal dressing room that has an ancestral familiarity to it through all the elements used but is also slightly distressing and uncomfortable as a result of the personal references used that are recognisable and can be identified with but not fully understood. This is done by using personal references but then distilling them and transforming them so they become essentially symbols and motifs in order to aid the work connect with viewers on a historic and emotional level. This connection is further strengthened by the employment of a mirror in the centre of the elements, immediately making the viewer part of the work.

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