Well Maybe I do Too

“Well Maybe I Do Too” is a piece which was made to explore the feeling of entrapment in a place you consider 'home'. The painting portrays the feeling of being unable to escape the environment around you despite it usually being a source of comfort. It is largely based on a photograph of myself taken in 2022 which was also inspiration for “Self Portrait 2” (2025) which I began painting in 2022 shortly after I took the photograph. After eventually completing “Self Portrait 2” I began working on “Well Maybe I Do Too” to serve as a more accurate representation of the feelings I was experiencing at the time.

“Self Portrait 2” (2025)

“Self Portrait 2” was the last piece I worked on before commencing a brief hiatus from painting. I returned to the work in 2025 and completed it within a few hours, breaking down the realism of the piece through the use of more vivid colours and experimental marks with oil pastel. This piece is significant to me not only as an expression of myself but also as a symbol of my work and it’s regenerative nature.

“Well Maybe I Do Too” is a development of “Self Portrait 2” in many aspects. The realistic elements of the piece serve only to provide context for the viewer whilst the surrealist elements support the underlying narrative of the piece; the squares of colour inspired by net fabrics often used to create large aviaries. Double exposure photography informs and inspires a lot of my practice, as it did here when I decided to overlap images of bird enclosures over the original photograph of myself from 2022. These experiments informed the outcome of the final painting, an amalgamation of many experiments based around self-portraiture.

“Well Maybe I Do Too”

(2025) Oil on canvas, A2