Dark Hope is a series of small works in oil – it has been some years now so I decided to work in a restricted palette and small scale. I also wanted to explore working looser and more intuitively with these works while bringing out some of the characters I have presented in previous works. I also use spray paint for the grounds of these works. The approach is deliberately minimalistic. I am also diving into allowing a greater degree of dramatic staging to enter, as well as exploring the use of states – a notion associated with photography, in terms of the perceived temporality of the captured image that is set within a frame.