If the loud, polarising world drags us to the depths of conformity, how much of ourselves do we leave behind? What is the shape of belonging? How have we adapted to fit in?
This series follows the journey from feeling like a square peg in a round hole to finding stillness. Circles and squares in paired composition express identity, truth, and expectation, through form, rhythm, and texture. The circle, the mandala archetype of wholeness, enlightenment, and self, converses with the square, a symbol of conformity, containment, and order.
This work is layered, deliberate, unresolved, and at times messy. Each piece relates to the negative and positive spaces of its opposing partner, reflecting the push and pull of growth. One canvas cannot exist without its partner, and in this way we experience the duality of inner and outer being.
“Square Peg Round Hole is an honest exploration of becoming whole. It evolved into sixteen pairs. I didn’t set out with this intention. With each challenge completed, another appeared. Alongside the emotions of colour, the finish of the paint was also important. I deliberately chose paints that give a high-gloss, almost wet appearance. This brings a sense of immediacy and life to the work, as if the emotions are still forming, still present.” – Gina.
The title piece of the series, this is the moment Square Peg Round Hole first speaks, with precocious colour.
Together, these configurations hold the tension between how the world frames us, and how we feel inside. This pair uses the full colour spectrum without hierarchy; every element is valid.
As the first painted work in the series, following the pair of blank canvases, Square Peg Round Hole begins with honesty. It simply says, “This is all of me.”
Lost and Found claims selfhood. It embodies the act of shaping one’s own space in the world, not passively accepting identity as it is handed to us, rather actively stating it through choice, voice, and presence.
Lost and Found is angular and asymmetrical, it’s also playful and disobedient.
This pair speaks of systems designed to shape us and the radical choice to shape ourselves.
Louder Than Labels breaks through the suffocating grid of assumption.
There are always boxes to tick and identities to define, but not every life fits.
Where we challenge the rules, colours coalesce, and identity is claimed; loud and certain.
This pair is for anyone who has been reduced to a single word or type. Anyone who has had to unlearn what they were told to be, just to discover who they really are.