Bearing Witness

‘Bearing Witness’ is a series of paintings that quietly but powerfully confront the presence of US military and nuclear infrastructure on British soil. Through the eyes of animals—mute observers of human folly—the works reflect on themes of occupation, complicity, and the quiet resilience of nature in the shadow of empire.

In paintings like ‘Bearing Witness’, we see a quietly damning tableau: innocent animals — a pair of rabbits — passively observing the surreal juxtaposition of US missiles standing erect on English soil, fenced in behind barbed wire and shadowed by the looming form of a black paper airplane, an eerie symbol of both childhood and destruction. The muted purples and sickly greens set a dreamlike but sinister mood, casting the idyllic Suffolk countryside as an unwilling stage for the imperial theatre of American militarism. The presence of these mute animal witnesses is powerful — they neither understand nor resist, but their gaze implicates us. This work, and others like it, critique the absurdity and violence of foreign nuclear installations nestled into rural Britain under the guise of 'defence'. It’s a haunting reminder that while politicians make deals in Whitehall and Washington, it is the land — and its silent inhabitants — that bear the burden.

In ‘Bearing Witness’, each animal becomes a sentinel—silent, watchful, and eerily present. In ‘Feline Observer’,  a lone cat sits beneath a sherbet-pink sky as two dark silhouettes of fighter jets roar overhead, their exhaust trails burning into the soft hues of an otherwise tranquil scene. The cat, vibrantly pink yet still, stares beyond the tangled barbed wire and into a militarised landscape of abstracted forms and muted violence. This work, like the others, refuses spectacle—instead, it dwells in the tension between innocence and aggression, land and machinery, presence and power. Through this disarmingly tender lens, the series calls viewers to see what so many choose to ignore.