B: After moving to London, you gained a Foundation Diploma from Chelsea Art School, an HNC from Kensington and Chelsea College and a BA in Fine Art from City & Guilds of London Art School - and now you are attending the first year of a MFA at Slade Art School. How do you think art schools have shaped your work?

AS: It has been quite a journey! I began aged eighteen and now I am twenty-five! It’s difficult to separate exactly how art school shaped my art, as much as life experiences. I’m glad to have done my foundation in London, as it was here I learnt about various galleries dotted around the city, such as: The Approach, Stuart Shave Modern Art and Cabinet Gallery. City and Guilds of London Art School was an important three years as it is during your BA that you find you own voice. It is a very sensitive time that requires hours dedicated to just being in your studio. Even if it meant going into school and destroying an almost successful painting, the action of sitting with your works, surrounded by other creatives meant my individual purpose with art became clearer. Making art is a very isolating act. Philip Guston’s famous quote ‘When you start working, everybody is in your studio—the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas—all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving’ illuminates this. With constant advice at hand, some of the conversations had during tutorials still replay in my mind when I’m painting now - this guidance was invaluable. This environment allowed me to experiment and shape my own style. My Masters is going well; I feel very lucky to be at The Slade. Every day I walk up the main stairs, I think of all my heroes that made the same journey to the studio - people like Duncan Grant, Michael Andrews and Eduardo Paolozzi.

B: A video you recently posted on Instagram shows several different stages you went through for one painting. There is a landscape that is constantly affected by changes, with figures emerging and disappearing. Can you tell me more about this process in your paintings?

AS: My paintings go through so many stages because I am trying to capture how I believe our memory works. Paint helps me understand things. I know how many shifts occurred, when I look at the finished piece, but the viewer does not. They only see the final image on one plane. I feel this process mirrors how we all carry our own narratives and stories, but when you meet a person for the first time, you just see how they exist in that one moment, sitting in front of you. This is similar to the assembled plane of a finished canvas, where the surface blocks sections of the journey that led the finishing mark. My aim is that viewers want to unpick the painting, burrowing under the different surfaces where narratives are continually changing and so is the mood. As each time I return to paint, I feel different, resulting in a canvas being layered with different emotional states.