Purple Portal (2024)
Purple Portal was an immersive installation consisting of a large (297 x 420 mm) watercolour and gouache painting surrounded by a portal drawn with black Indian ink and displayed within a purple sensory experience involving fabrics, foil curtains, birdsong and diffused lavender scent.
The project was staged at the Aberystwyth Arts Centre in the 2024 pop-up student-led exhibition ‘The Takeover’, run by Creative Arts students of Aberystwyth University.
Purple Portal was about experiencing escapism from the negative aspects of everyday life. It drew on magical symbols I associate with childhood, myth, and folklore as well as a whimsical approach to painting fantasy-style landscape inspired by artists like Anne Stokes.
The purple installation combined lighting with textures and sound to create an exciting sensory portal-like experience to lead the viewer towards the painting itself, constructing a space that felt separate from everything beyond the room.
The surrounding portal was drawn in black ink to symbolize the dullness of modernity outside of the colourful realm within the painting.
The piece was personal to me, representing a daydream-like journey from within my imagination, to a serene space where I would feel calm and contented, away from the anxieties of real life.
