Uncommissioned (2021)

Materials: Beeswax, damar resin, wax crayon, oil stick, wood, hardback paper book, acetate.

Uncommissioned is an exploration of memory, transformation, and the quiet dialogues between the natural and the manufactured world. It began with a simple yet profound discovery. A paper wasp had built its delicate nest in the hollow of an abandoned doorway beside an old fragment of graffiti. This unintentional collaboration between nature and human expression sparked a question. Could I merge the organic and the urban into a process that would reflect the evolution of both my surroundings and my own artistic practice?

Each week I sought out new graffiti markings, painting them with molten beeswax before they hardened into permanence. With each new piece, the previous painting was covered, absorbed, and ultimately concealed beneath the next. Over time the layers thickened until the wax could support itself and stand independently, breaking free from its wooden base. This gradual accumulation became a metaphor for my own growth as an artist, each mark reinforcing the next, each moment of creation building upon the last. The work is not a single image but a history of gestures, a palimpsest where past and present exist simultaneously.

The ritual of this practice became a meditation, a rhythm of discovery and transformation that I continue throughout my life. The immediacy of working with molten beeswax demands instinct and trust. Every stroke must be made with confidence before the medium solidifies. This urgency offers a freedom that allows the drawings to remain raw and expressive. Over time I have come to see this technique as a mirror of the city itself. Like the walls layered with decades of graffiti, my paintings accumulate unseen histories beneath their surfaces, holding within them the energy and movement of many hands and many moments in time.

At its core Uncommissioned is a reflection on impermanence and revelation. The walls of a city do not simply bear witness to time. They absorb it. The thickened skins of buildings, covered and recovered in paint, only reveal their richness when they begin to fragment and break apart. Beneath each peeling layer is another story, another voice, another era. This work is an homage to those unseen layers, to the quiet beauty of what is built up and what is lost, to the unseen marks that shape us all.

Materials: Beeswax, damar resin, wax crayon, oil stick, wood, hardback paper book, acetate.