My Process

I painted Dis Place using my process of layered washes, gels, modelling paste and translucent glazes, gradually allowing the two contrasting worlds within the painting to emerge. I used stencils and heavy texture to create the repeated wallpaper pattern and applied textural medium on the ceiling to imitate artex. I created the texture in the carpet with heavy paint, building several layered patterns. I wanted the interior to feel physically decorated and constructed rather than simply painted onto a flat canvas, giving the viewer a sense that they could step into the room.

The heavily textured carpet and ceiling create a tactile warmth, while the snow-covered landscape is painted more loosely and unresolved, allowing the cold exterior to feel less certain and more dreamlike. I deliberately blurred parts of the composition to create distance and suggest memories that have begun to fade—some remaining vivid and detailed, while others become softened by time.

Through the gradual layering of texture, pattern, washes and glazes, the boundaries between the familiar and unfamiliar begin to dissolve. The painting moves between warmth and cold, memory and reality, homeland and host country, reflecting the complex experience of belonging to two places while sometimes feeling fully at home in neither.