Jungle Monster *** (Pre Sale) ***

Jungle Monster is the first in the Jungle Monster Collection.

This project befits itself within the wider context of my career as a character designer for film and video games. I am maintaining an intermediate position between fine and commercial art and plan to pursue my career with a foot firmly planted in each. My fine arts practice allows me to dredge the underlying mechanics that uphold the current status quo of diversity representation in mass media. These images are powerful agents of social conditioning. As a concept artist, I have a social responsibility to design ethical representations of diversity within the cast of the films and games I work on. This series of 6 large format oil paintings explores the capacity of the high-fantasy genre to re-envision the social, political, and economic dynamics that define our identities. By reaching back to early Orientalist artwork and representations, I am studying how these images of the “other”, produced from a specific vantage point and with a determined intention, have shaped an enduring negative stereotype for the representation of diversity in mass media. This series allows me to explore human depictions that proudly burst of the essence of their localities and origins without indulging the colonial subtext that has long shaped the movement. This colonial viewpoint has, subsequently, been the basis for character designs for the fantasy genre in popular culture. I am enriching this series by reading Orientalism by Edward Said, Art Writing in Crisis by Sternberg Press, and Envisioning Real Utopias by Erik Olin Wright, which examine various aspects of decolonizing art and society, as well as changing the paradigms that govern us.

Work on this peice began in 2020. The research in terms of medium & subject acocunts for a significant part of the process for this collection.

Visit my Youtube Channel for the work in progress videos. Content still being uploaded regularly as the piece is still in production.

Jungle Monster:
Oils and 18 carats gold.
42 X 68 in cotton canvas.
Estimated Date of Completion: December 2024