Artist Statement

Scape, memory and identity are ever present in my work. My childhood, spent diversely in wide-open spaces with my father fishing for mackerel and at home with my mother's hoarding and mental health issues, defined my relationship to the sea and land and consequently my art practice: the uncertainty of the deep, the spirit and memory of open spaces, evoking freedom and connectedness. My practice is an expression of the intermingling of joy and pain, love and loss: the human condition, and tracks the line between abstraction and figuration, and in both my painting and my photography practice, a fundamental need and longing to find the space I was denied at home as a child.  

When painting, I am completely immersed in the process, building a reverberating relationship with the canvas, a push and pull of spontaneity and controlled intention, whilst aiming to evoke an atmosphere drawn from the relationship with the canvas, the emotional trigger and the colour palette employed. 

My Photography, often mistaken as reproductions of my paintings are photographed because of their inherent illusion of horizon and form, these chance marks, stains, colours and textures on walls and other surfaces, some of which have partly been laid down by others by accident or with previous intent, become chimerical worlds and fictional places.

There is a continuing symbiotic feed between my painting and my photography.