Your name
Arrayah Loynd
Place of birth
England
Place where you live now
Australia
3 words to describe you
Messy, chaotic, kind
Why do you take pictures?
As a way to process and make sense of my experiences and my internal world. I never quite know what I need to create but I always trust the process. I take pictures without any real understanding of what I will do with them. I have a large catalogue of images that I then refer back to to create new images based on what I am feeling and needing to process in that moment. I include archival material as well as my own images from the past and present. The capture is not as important to me as the experimentation that happens afterwards.
Where do you get your inspiration?
It's mostly internal. I see a thousand different possibilities in my mind with every image I am creating and I want to create them all NOW. I am hyper sensitive to colour, tone and textures so I am always touching things and storing visual references in my mind. I can be inspired by the vastness and intricacies of nature just as much as the texture and colour of a piece of fabric.
Who are your influences?
I am drawn to art and artists that make me feel something. It is the vulnerability and emotional honesty that I am influenced by rather than the visual style or aesthetics. Some of my favourites at the moment are Ayman Kaake, Lisa Murray, Cecilia Sordi Campos, Morganna Magee to name a few. They are all conceptual Melbourne artists that I know and are expressing themselves in deep and meaningful ways that I find courageous and inspiring.
What determines the subject matter you choose?
It is all based on emotion. I don't predetermine what I will do subject wise, I just know I need to express something that is causing me pain or discomfort that I can't articulate and need to explore. From the act of creating comes the material. I create prolifically and most of it ends up in the bin. Not because it is necessarliy bad but because it has served its purpose of helping me understand myself a little more. At the moment I am working on my recent experiences of PTSD and dissociative states. It may end up as something worth publishing... or not.
What impact would you like your art to have?
I never created this work with an audience in mind and have been so surprised that my Come and Find Me series has connected with so many people in the way that it has. I thought I was so alone in my experience of the world but in creating and sharing this work I know that I am not. I hope that it helps others like me feel less alone and to know that you are not broken, just different... and different is something to be celebrated.
What artwork do you never get bored with?
I have a little old map of Lancashire (England) in a dilapidated frame. It used to belong to my grandparents and it sat above the dining table in their house for as long as I can remember. I was with my grandmother when she passed away and afterwards this was the only thing I brought back home with me to Australia. It holds memory and keeps me connected to her and my other home.
Is there anything you want to add?
It’s 11am and I’m still in my pyjamas.

COME AND FIND ME
Project statement

My brain doesn’t hold memory
Not much anyway

What memory there is is fragmented
disjointed
Something that I can’t quite touch
But leaves me feeling confused
Frustrated and overwhelmed

My brain doesn’t work in a linear fashion
It shoots off into a million different points at once
Stretching me thin and exhausted

I see fragments of words spoken
And feel moments of deeds done
They hold me down and hold me back

Like a child I fold into myself
Disorientated as to what is real and what is not

Told to be good
Be still
Be silent

This world is not for the likes of me
I can try and negotiate but it makes no difference
I am frustrated and frustrating
Ask anyone

I am not who they say I am
I am not who you think I am
I am no one and nothing
I am everyone and everything

So come and find me
But only in the small moments when I want to be found

I make no promise that I will be there

My brain doesn’t process thoughts and feelings very well.
It struggles to separate things, gets them all tangled up and leaves me exhausted.
Being able to express myself visually/creatively becomes a burning need. It brings a sense of relief from extreme emotions and physical sensations that I don’t always understand. It helps me to unravel the coil in my belly and the burning in my mind.
From my ongoing series Come and Find Me, this series reflects the place in my mind where trauma and memory converge. It is the place within me that simultaneously experiences pain and peace. It combines multiple images from a near and distant past and the continuous blending and erosion of pixels until I arrive at the visual embodiment that is the confusion of my mind.

arrayah loynd
@arrayahloyndphotographer