Biting the Hand That Feeds is a series of drawings inspired by the strategies that we as individuals develop to cope with authority: including passive aggression, direct aggression, passivity, complacency and/or and powerlessness, and the roots of those mechanisms in early childhood and trauma.

The series evolved into an exploration of the idea of the blood orange, and the vampiric relationship between child and parent – the way they “eat” each other. The relationship of power is located in the mouth and in the stomach symbolically for us. The orange is something we eat, something that gives us energy, power and vitamin C, and it is also reminiscent of a globe, which, in Baroque drawings, was representative of power.

From writer Estelle Hoy: “[the blood orange] flesh is formed by warm days and cool nights” – this made me think of the unreliability of human feelings; the way we go through emotional phases of hot and cold, the inconsistency and unreliability of symbols of authority and power. The idea of an inconsistent parent.

I was also interested in imitating a smoke effect, creating an image between flood and fire – both of which are catastrophes. Somehow this series is made under catastrophic circumstances (pandemic, climate crisis), which is the wider political context for the drawings. The narrative story about parenthood and ideas of domination, passivity and care – is always immersed, and flooded, or borne of an “incendiary” context or environment. It’s an environment in which things are flammable, where they can catch fire, where things are out of control. A constant feeling of danger and threat.