Artist statement

I use water-soluble media with drawing and expressive marks to evoke my sensory reaction to being surrounded by nature or enveloped by soundscapes.

The sounds of a stag bursting through undergrowth, woodland birdsong, urban shopping mall echoes, conversations with gallery visitors, and a viola improvising from my own paintings, have all underpinned recent projects.

But I don’t illustrate my starting points. My visual language alludes to subterranean life force, solace and survival, found within nature, the body and the senses.

The resulting planes, clouds of marks and illegible calligraphic lines are communicative but resist interpretation. The forms contain attention to the present moment, stillness and movement. And the paper’s textural qualities, indentations and bruises challenge the smooth digital screen that veils lived experience.

With a cross-disciplinary background in literature and psychotherapy, my work is informed by Greek mythologies and metamorphoses, and ideas about voicelessness and the paradoxical insufficiency of words, wordless embodied perception, how the eye interprets visual information, and how we ‘know’ what we know.

I work with the idea that art can mirror back parts of ourselves, invite contemplation, and offer sustenance. And fundamentally, I make art for its ancient capacity to navigate life’s deeper waters.