Artist's statement

My practice is a process or an attempt to elucidate the underlying psychology that shapes the actions we make, the memories that we form, and the relationships and societies we create.

I am fascinated by extremes of emotion: violent anger, ecstatic passion, overwhelming sadness and the hysteria of vacillating between these alternate states. I want to capture the multiplicity of this delirium and document the experiences that manifest to us most directly our own mortal nature and sentience.

Heavily influenced by literature and film, the narrative structure of my work is intrinsically character based and predominantly uses symbolic elements to tell a story. The characters featured in my work are all involved in journeys of some sort. They are either searching for something, someone, or attempting to attain a deliverance, salvation and maybe redemption. Even if the result of reaching their objectives is detrimental to the characters' interests, the drive for fulfillment is absolute and unavoidable. They are people questing for psychological freedom, whose journeys are impressed with the structures, events and encounters that have led them to this fruition.

The environments or physical spaces depicted within the composition of my work often play a principal role in its structure. These environments specifically manifest the characters' inner psychology and emotional states, as well as communicating the narrative of the piece. They are worlds where memories, dreams and psychic dimensions take upon a physicality, where reality, time and space are defined by the inner journey of the protagonist.

Themes of memory, love, betrayal and home feature heavily throughout my work. My practice enables me to conceive or actualize my life's unrealized possibilities and my characters are embodiments of this infinite potentiality. The narrative, in which the characters exist, is a structure in which my regrets, desires, passions and imagination meld together and metamorphose to form an articulation of an inner world, of my metaphysical or emotional reality.

I create work in a variety of media: drawing, painting, diorama and 3d works, fabric collage, sound installation and text/poetry. My working methods are strongly based in the actions of drawing. Drawing is the primary mechanism in developing and disseminating my ideas.

I am very interested in the relationship between my work and the environment it occupies. I pay a high regard to the curating or arrangement of my work and the context it is exhibited in. I have exhibited in many unusual spaces chosen specifically because of their connection with the content of my practice.

Nicholas McArthur 2010