Perter's Diary
Born from my Master’s research, Peter’s Diary is a descent into the fractured psyches of children who dwell on the precipice of violence. My work confronts the shadow-side of childhood—focusing on those who lack the mirror of empathy and whose impulses lead them to harm the creatures and people around them. This exploration was forged through the chilling clarity of Melanie Klein’s clinical observations and my own encounters with children and families navigating these silent storms, seeking the human pulse beneath the clinical diagnosis. Over the past two years, I have distilled this research into a magical realism short story, weaving the heavy symbolism of my original illustrations into a narrative where the surreal becomes a language for the unspeakable. Under my hand, the project has evolved into a study of the visceral and the symbolic, mapping a landscape where innocence and cruelty bleed into one another.
This project marks my first deep engagement with a complex symbolic lexicon. Within this space, the recurring figures of cats and tigers serve as avatars for the dominant paternal presence during the formative psychological stages of childhood. In parallel, the inclusion of Eastern still lifes—lush peaches and the fixed, smiling faces of porcelain female ornaments—channels the pervasive anxiety of "the gaze," capturing the unsettling sense of being observed that haunts the child’s evolving consciousness.
In this body of work, the central figure serves as a vessel for exploring the early stages of childhood psychosexual development. The inclusion of nude female forms within the compositions is a direct reflection of my engagement with Melanie Klein’s clinical notes; specifically, I am interested in her theories regarding how a child’s nascent awareness of parental intimacy profoundly shapes their own early sexual and psychological identity. This visual narrative seeks to externalize those primal, subconscious influences that define the very beginnings of the human ego.
