The System is part of my ongoing body of work, Systems of Protection, which explores the private rituals, superstitions and rules we construct to create a sense of control over uncertainty.

The painting draws on my own relationship with numbers, repetition and checking, where arbitrary patterns can acquire an irrational sense of consequence. Through layered marks, notation and repeated forms, the work attempts to make this invisible internal logic physical: a system that appears chaotic from the outside but, to the person inside it, feels ordered, necessary and protective.

Acrylic and graphite on canvas, 2026

122cm x 91cm