My work takes the form of a series of disclosures; these are ambiguous and mysterious in their nature. I am concerned with making cipher-like images that are purposeful, yet obscure and evasive.
The inspiration for my work is drawn, in part, from a personal realm of inner space. I explore this realm through a process of introspection, and discovery here is only ever partial and inconclusive.
My sense of inner space is inseparable from my perception and enjoyment of material forms. Inspiration from the material world is often to be found in looking at seemingly insignificant or common place things, such as the scales of a fir cone or a knot in a cravat, the nook of a tree or a piece of broken glass. In my observation of ornament in nature, artefact and design, I am seeking both revelry and the possibility of the enrichment of the human self. Through painting and drawing, I explore and aspire to invoke both the ephemeral nature of experience and the qualities of preciousness, strangeness and potency that I feel a particular place or pattern, object or thing can radiate.
My use of grids, lines, pattern and repetition feels instinctive and primal, and they are an integral part of the language of my work. Pattern is both a means of creating some kind of order or structure, and a device to make links and connections, concealments and openings in an image. I also use repeating decorative motifs as units of construction. My approach is contemplative rather than literal, and I employ pattern and motifs, however fragmentary or loosely drawn, as an equivalent of poetic expression.
I love the materiality of painting and I approach the canvas or a sheet of paper as if it were a stage; as in a play, I think of colours as props, and the forms I create in a work as characters which I require to perform or act out specific roles. I often spend a long time working on a piece, adding layers or scraping and stripping back over and over in the attempt to reach an aspired for moment when a piece becomes buoyant, and the forms within it begin to vibrate or bob about or achieve a certain tension, and the work feels alive to me in some way.
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