I’m no longer interested in chasing legitimacy through outdated hierarchies. My work—whether digital, painted, or mixed—is about truth. Truth to my tools, my class, my time, and my experience.
When Categories Stop Progress
The world loves boundaries. Art vs craft. Digital vs traditional. Academic vs outsider. Serious vs playful. But these divisions don’t reflect the real world—they reflect systems built to separate, not to include.
In art, provenance and pedigree decide who gets taken seriously. In science, language and paywalls block understanding. In politics, parties and labels fracture dialogue. Everywhere, categories become cages—protecting power, but suffocating imagination.
Progress doesn’t come from guarding boundaries. It comes from breaking them.
Digital as Realism
When people speak of “realism” in art, they often mean technical skill—lifelike detail, perfected through decades of training. But for me, realism isn’t about technique. It’s about honesty.
I’m working class. I don’t have endless time, inherited wealth, or access to elite institutions. My realism is digital—because digital is the world I live in. It’s the tool I know, the medium that fits my life. Photoshop, 3D modelling, photography, mixed media—these are not shortcuts; they’re reflections of reality.
The traditional path to “mastery” was built for another class, another time. Long apprenticeships, oil paints, marble—they carry histories of privilege. My materials are screens, pixels, and software. They are just as valid, just as expressive, and far more accessible. To pretend otherwise would be dishonest.
Digital isn’t lesser—it’s modern realism. It’s how I show my world as it truly is: fast, fluid, connected, and shaped by technology.
Provenance or Freedom?
The art world’s obsession with provenance—the signed certificate, the archive, the gallery trail—was designed for scarcity. It gives stability, ownership, and market control. But in the digital age, art is no longer scarce. It’s reproducible, remixable, and alive in constant evolution.
Provenance may protect artists from theft, but it also locks imagination behind fences. Digital culture—from memes to open-source design—thrives on collective creativity. It’s messy, collaborative, democratic. It mirrors the rave floor: nobody owns it, but everyone shapes it.
This is the paradox I live with. I value recognition and survival. But I also believe in freedom—in the idea that art can belong to everyone. I’m learning to navigate between the two: honouring my authorship while resisting the cages of ownership.
Towards a New Authenticity
The art world often equates legitimacy with tradition. But authenticity is not found in oil paint or marble—it’s found in truth. Truth to circumstance, to voice, to class.
My authenticity lies in choosing tools that match my reality, not the expectations of an academy. It lies in breaking down artificial hierarchies between digital and fine art. It lies in questioning systems that reward pedigree over creativity.
I don’t create to impress institutions. I create to express experience—working-class experience, contemporary experience, human experience. If that means breaking categories, so be it.
What Comes Next
As I move forward, my practice will continue to challenge the borders between fine art and digital, craft and concept, ownership and freedom. I want my work to exist in the space between—the place where imagination meets reality without apology.
The old rules served their time. My rules are different:
- Access over exclusivity.
- Honesty over hierarchy.
- Freedom over control.
I’m not building art to fit into someone else’s box. I’m building a practice that reflects the world as I see it—complex, shifting, and beautifully beyond category.