Drawing on the language of 17th-century Dutch art with its ready-made gravitas - mortality, fragility, ostentation - I have been staging narratives using digital collage, photographs, oversized flowers, kitsch objects and ornaments, investigating the tension between high and low art

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The aggressive fairies respond to the well-known photograph of a bare-chested Putin riding a horse, which epitomises for me the hyper-macho posturing prevalent in today’s politics. Symbolically shrinking violence and aggression to a minimal size renders them harmless.

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My cultural heritage is reflected in the resultant paintings, a blend of Polish exotica and Cockney humour, which influences the work both atmospherically, emotively and aesthetically. Lockdown 2020 gave me time to take an in-depth look at the flora and fauna of the domestic garden and to reevaluate it as subject matter alongside art historical sources. I now grow and photograph my own flowers, using the bouquet as a stage or backdrop, to intertwine my daily living with my art practice.