PAINTINGS & DRAWINGS

My paintings explore memory and the unseen through layered imagery, repetition, and intuitive mark-making. Each piece develops through free association and erasure, allowing forms to appear and fade like shifting thoughts, until a response is evoked, and new connections are formed.  Growing out of my film and animation work, the paintings carry ideas of repetition, looping, layering and transformation into still images.

They act as a form of visual thinking, drawing on ideas from psychoanalysis to reflect how memory, fear, desire, and perception shape what we are willing to show and what we choose to hide. The imagery often references childhood photos, films, animation, and popular culture, translated into hand-made, imperfect forms. Recurring motifs such as the smoker, the dancers, the boxers, the sheriff, the black bird, and the kissing couple, appear across works, echoing psychoanalytical ideas of repression, authority, instinct, and desire. I don’t see these elements as carrying fixed meanings; rather, they function like musical notes or chords, shaping rhythm, and atmosphere within the image.

By combining digital styles and bitmap textures with scribbles and painterly gestures, the paintings explore the interplay between external patterns and personal emotion. The works aim to create an atmosphere of tension and unease, where familiar forms and references are subtly altered, inviting viewers to sense the instability of memory and the shifting nature of perception.

email crossman@me.com for enquiries