“Born in London, I have been continuously inspired by the variety of life. How different one person is from the next and how rich and beautiful the variables can be. 

 

As a person with Synaesthesia – a cross wiring in the brain that causes unusual associations between colour and the other senses – my childhood was full of idiosyncratic sensory experience. For me, numbers and shapes have always had colours, certain sounds or smells are accompanied by vivid patterns and textures and a person or place can appear to me as a collage of all these visual, physical and emotional occurrences. 

​

As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to cherish my synesthetic experiences and the unique lens they give me into this world. Painting provides a language for the kaleidoscope of colours and forms that accompany my daily experience. There is something pure and magnetising about collecting visual inspiration like treasures, depriving context and creating new landscapes from fragments of the mundane. I collect inspiration in the form of photographs, written dreams, stories, literature, and poetry along with personal drawings, paint studies and collages, creating a web of experience in tactile guise. 

​

I’m fascinated by themes of vulnerability and power in unassuming forms. Silhouettes of figures in motion or intimate scenes, peeling paint on forgotten walls, family, religion, sexuality, and identity. 

​

All the normalities that make us both beautiful and complicated”. Xan is an awardee of a two-year scholarship which has helped her hone her skills. As a self taught artist she has pursued her artistic interests undertaking numerous courses in contemporary portraiture, etching, colour theory, mindfulness in art, life drawing and sketching from opera and theatre. She gained a scholarship to complete an intensive course at the Royal Drawing School in London.