About

LUAP’s practice explores how psychological states shaped by memory, personal history and internal contradiction can be made visible through symbolic image-making. At its centre is a recurring figure: The Pink Bear. Bold and surreal, the character functions as both alter ego and emotional cipher - a tool for investigating identity, visibility and vulnerability. It reflects the tension between how we are seen and what we carry beneath the surface.

The process begins in real environments. LUAP photographs The Pink Bear in remote or physically demanding locations such as mountains, forests, deserts and abandoned buildings. These settings are chosen for their visual impact but also for the solitude, dislocation and endurance they demand. The work incorporates a performative element, with the artist placing himself, inside the costume, into often uncomfortable conditions. The images are captured without digital manipulation and later serve as references for large-scale Oil Paintings.

These Paintings are executed entirely by hand using traditional methods. They do not reproduce the Photographs but reimagine them through material, gesture and surface. A heightened realism is layered with expressive mark-making, allowing clarity to dissolve into abstraction. Each Painting becomes a psychological terrain where memory, dream and emotional states coexist - from the texture of childhood wallpaper to fleeting moods and subconscious imagery.

Recent portraits extend the project beyond the motif. Faces appear, fracture and reform. Drawing on psychological research and lived experience around mental health, these works treat portraiture as a place where resilience and uncertainty can coexist. They ask for slow looking and allow the viewer to complete what is withheld.

While playful in appearance, the work is underpinned by a quiet seriousness. The Pink Bear resists fixed interpretation: it is childlike but not childish, familiar yet estranged. It invites projection, acting as both performer and witness, archetype and mask. LUAP avoids narrative closure, instead creating a space for ambiguity, reflection and internal contradiction.

Grounded in lived experience and informed by psychological research, the Practice also registers a sensitivity to the natural world and the pressures of modern selfhood. The aim is not to offer answers, but to hold space for vulnerability, contradiction and the shared, often unseen dimensions of being human.