Solitary Playground
My project explores the intersection between landscape painting and virtual environments through a hauntological lens. Solitary Playground is a suite of works developed from my personal relationship with digital spaces—specifically the boundaries within video game worlds. These works question the virtual environment’s ability to redefine our understanding of space, isolation, and narrative.
Using aluminium and board as a painting surface, I contrast the tactile permanence of metal and wood with the illusionary tactility of virtual landscapes. The paintings draw from heavily filtered, extracted imagery sourced directly from within video games, specifically focusing on glitched, unreachable areas across my most-played game – Batman: Arkham City. These spaces—devoid of action or purpose—become sites of reflection and spectral presence.
Hauntology as a concept informs the visual language of the works. The absence of a figure, the blur between abstraction and figuration, and the charged use of Fluro Green evoke a temporal dislocation—neither past nor future, real nor imagined. This atmosphere mirrors the emotional quality of video game spaces that promise utopia while masking psychological confinement.
Video games have fast become the most dominant entertainment medium, the virtual now eclipsing the real in desirability. These simulated environments offer control, narrative potential, and a sense of escape—qualities missing from most areas of contemporary life. Isolation becoming normalized in technologically advanced societies increases reliance on these virtual worlds, hinting at a broader cultural and emotional displacement.
The art of Luc Tuymans and Thomas Goates, along with theorists Frederic Jameson and Amelia Barikin see painting not as a nostalgic act, but as a present-tense tool—one that processes our affective relationships to digital space. Solitary Playground positions painting as a critical site to reflect on how we construct meaning, memory, and agency in the age of the virtual.
Solitary Playground explores the boundary between landscape painting and virtual environments through a hauntological lens. Using aluminium and board, I contrast the physicality of materials with glitched, unreachable areas from Batman: Arkham City. These empty, spectral spaces question how virtual worlds shape our sense of isolation and narrative. Influenced by Luc Tuymans and theorists like Jameson, the works reflect on how painting can process memory, dislocation, and agency in an era where digital escape increasingly defines our emotional and cultural landscape.