Painting Series: At Home With Being Lost

At Home with Being Lost Acrylic paintings on wooden panel, 2017 This body of work is centred on walking and the mundane paths we take each day. These paintings draw predominantly from viewpoints within my local area, where familiar routes take on new meaning when one is not native to their environment. The writings of Walter Benjamin and Charles Baudelaire introduce the concept of the flâneur — a figure whose experience of the city differs from that of the tourist. Rather than landmarks and spectacles, the flâneur moves through back streets and everyday spaces, engaging in flânerie: idle yet attentive strolling shaped by familiarity with place. As described by Larousse, the flâneur is someone who has: “His eyes open, his ear ready, searching for something entirely different from what the crowd gathers to see.” To live neither as a tourist nor as a native is to exist in a space of juxtaposition. My paintings emerge from this position. After living abroad for an extended period, I walk these paths with confidence and familiarity, adopting rhythms often associated with the native inhabitant. In walking to and from work each day, I come to understand these routes intimately, noticing details a visitor might overlook: seasonal shifts in flowering plants, or how early summer typhoons alter the surface of the streets. To move through a city with the eyes of a native while remaining visibly foreign is a tension-filled position to occupy. This state of being a “foreign native” carries both privilege and unease. I exist between the worlds of tourist and local, never fully at home in either. My paintings respond to this condition. I draw colour palettes from Japanese washi papers, using them to frame overhead perspectives of my journeys. This downward gaze suggests not only isolation, but also attentiveness. The viewpoints depicted are easily overlooked and could belong to almost anywhere. Yet something distinctly Japanese remains present, subtly reinforced through colour and material choice. My walk to work is never simply a walk to work. Each journey shifts with weather, light, and encounter — small variations that accumulate, morning and afternoon, day after day.