I was inspired by a video in the archive, it observed people in their lives, going about their routines. These humans living, being alive, in the environments that they have created. I was drawn to the retro feel of the video, the stills in technicolor which lend a sense of vibrancy but also a sense of a bygone era or looking back. I wanted to observe other humans, to try and think about what being human means. We learn most things in life by watching others. That’s why I found this video so interesting, it is just ‘people watching‘. The viewer, as voyeur, is observing other people’s lives, their movements, their footprints, observing them being here on this planet. I was influenced by the posthuman lecture to look at humans as an entire species rather than singular individuals. The lecture discussed the divisions between humans and animals. I think that as a species we are beginning to stray further and further away from the natural world. The more we innovate and technologies advance the greater the separation is from other life forms. I considered environment as a way to distinguish or separate humans from other species. I wanted to represent this feeling of isolation and detachment by creating a tense unnatural atmosphere in my paintings. This is expressed in the urban environment, which is an entirely human construct, an artificial man-made environment.