‘Doomscroll’
We often think of doomscrolling as a habit of the phone. I see it as something older.
A way of postponing ourselves.
The figure sits in one of the smallest, most private rooms in a home, physically still while mentally somewhere else. Above them, the space seems to close in; dark forms spread across the ceiling like thoughts that have taken on a life of their own. The phone becomes less a subject than a refuge, a place to disappear into when the weight of being present feels heavier than another swipe.
Like much of my work, this painting isn't interested in judging modern behavior. It is interested in the emotional landscapes that produce it. The technology is contemporary, but the feeling is not. People have always searched for ways to avoid silence, uncertainty, grief, boredom, or themselves. We simply have better tools now.
Doomscroll explores that quiet tension between seeking comfort and drifting further away from it; the strange experience of looking for relief in something that keeps us suspended, one more scroll at a time.