Gallery Collection 64 - ‘Shrapnel’

‘Shrapnel’ is chaos with a plan. Dusty blue sweeps across the canvas in fast, aggressive strokes. Underneath it, hot magenta bleeds through in flashes. Raw canvas peeks out at the edges like breath. The whole surface is scored with long, looping scratches that cut through the wet paint. Then there are the fragments. Small, hard rectangles in white, grey, and black stuck right onto the surface. Some sit alone. Some cluster. They look like broken tile, keyboard keys, or teeth. Nothing here is precious. It is all movement and aftermath.

Through a neurodivergent lens, this is a meltdown mapped in real time. The periwinkle is the mask. It is a ‘calm’ blue you are told to use when you are actually screaming inside. It tries to cover everything, but the magenta rage and overstimulation keep pushing through. The scratches are self-soothing and self-destruction at once. They are the repetitive motions your hands make when your brain is too loud. And the fragments are the pieces that fall out of you when you cannot hold it together. Thoughts, words, tasks, social rules. They snap off and land where they land. They do not make sense to anyone else, but they are still part of you. This piece refuses to clean up. It leaves the evidence stuck to the surface. It says the meltdown is not a failure. It is data.