(work on canvas, 2010 – ongoing) paint, pen, pencil, blood, food colouring, embroidery thread, urine, bacon fat, etc. on canvas

I use the everyday things around me to mark, once each day, ‘I exist’ on the canvas, thus reaffirming and confirming my ongoing existence. It also acts as a sort of real-time calendar, marking time itself, getting more incomprehensible as time goes on.

This piece revisits an oft-seen anxiety in my work — the extent to which our cognition creates reality, and even the self. In this case, the work is a sly take on Descartes’ ‘Cogito…’ “I am thinking, therefore I am”. Beneath the surface there hovers the ongoing struggle to exist, and darker still, ever-present suicidality.