“These hands held me strong when I was broken. They wrote songs where I could never have spoken. They righted wrongs and wrongdoings that were written in stone, they formed filmy foams over chemical burns - distinguished friends from foes. These two hands are one tool of fundamental value. They were made to climb. You can fly and you will handle not just you but those around you.” - T.M/O

I make art because need to. My painting and writing definitely fill two different voids, where I see the creation of my visual works as pure meditation, unplanned catharsis, trust in the process, and basically something to keep my hands occupied whilst I delve deep into my thoughts and back out again.

I write when I am confused, frustrated, and do not know answers, its a motion of unpacking and connecting ideas that I couldn’t without the help of words and metaphor and recipients to bounce big ideas off of.

I’m obsessed with the very nature of us; the dualities and lies we tell to ourselves; the way we react as a collective and how that differs to individual ideologies. I am beyond interested in the human mind, in a pragmatic and relational way. I stray away from labels and work freely, because I believe in freedom facilitating art. freedom of time, movement and exploration of thought. I believe in the variety and nuance of myself, I believe in not taking the art too seriously. I love to draw people, I like to work with nuts and nut shells. I love to draw my dog and I love to make shapes I haven’t made before.

Up until now I have focussed heavily on PAULs - ( People Are Usually Lying) - these are the strange characters we all could be if we ripped off our skin and succumbed to the fleeting feelings we wear on our attitudes. I’ve made thousands of them. I love them.

“I do truly believe we are all the same but I think I’m incredibly exceptional”

I am definitely an intuitive, revenge based artist. I like to be the smartest in the room and I love to react to injustices I know to be true. Often I will start painting through the need to just sit and take time out to contemplate. Sometimes I will be doodling during another activity and the compulsion to replicate the image is too strong to ignore. I love to kill my art off. If I have made something I will keep it close, maybe in my bedroom, and stare at it, nearly every day. For years maybe, till the day it needs to go. And then it becomes something so new and beautiful. Until the next time.

My writing process is the same, its reactive, its a train of thought - I did not study English, I have no idea how to craft a sonnet but I do know that when I rhyme the important stuff, I get a grasp on an angle that I would not have been able to see before.

My process varies. When I was travelling it was pens and paper, when im settled I get to work on bigger projects on canvas. I was lucky enough to cast my own ring in silver and im currently experimenting with textiles. I select based on whats around me, my feelings and my timeframe - I often end up writing when the painting deadlines are looming, and vice versa. Right now I should be in the recording studio.

Notice the stars, the poetry, the leeches and the nuts - notice the muddiness because im impatient, and if I dont care for the paint to dry that’s part of my process too. I won’t be ashamed of it, only maybe I will, and ill write a poem about the shame. I feel there is definitely a small universe in which all my art coexists to the soundtrack of my poems - it is always political. try to separate yourself from each of the characters, because I dont think you can. They are beautiful but awkward, horny and hungry and lonely and together.

Themes of sex and accountability and shame and self soothing come up often in my writing, I talk of loss and beauty and lighting and drive. And regarding inspirations, I find anyone shaking the boat someone to look up to. I am less inspired by the artists I never studied and more by the personal journeys I see surrounding me in the family of creatives I have cultivated.

Women like Jazzi Sirius, Simone Yasmin, Alia - Organisations that have lifted me through community like Heads UK and Thrive Mental Health. The characters that exist around me are the reasons I get to live my passions - the art continues to save me time and time again. I’m here to strip pain from its powers, whatever that even means.