THE STATEMENT
ARTIST STATEMENT.
My paintings begin before I have words for them.
I work between figuration and abstraction. Faces, birds and human figures offer a point of recognition, while layers of paint disrupt, conceal and reshape them. I am drawn to the moment when an image remains recognisable but can no longer be read in only one way.
MATERIAL, COLOUR, INSTINCT.
The process is physical. I work with oil paint, pigment, charcoal and chalk, applying and removing material with brushes, palette knives, my hands and other tools. I build the surface, scrape it back and begin again. Each mark changes what comes next.
Being colour-blind means I do not approach colour as a fixed or correct system. I work through contrast, intensity and instinct. Colour does not have to describe reality. It has to carry feeling.
BENEATH THE SURFACE.
Freedom, vulnerability, resistance and change recur throughout the work. Symbolism adds another layer. A lily, a bird or another recurring form can carry associations of hope, trust, protection, transition or renewal. Their meaning is personal, but never closed. Beneath many of my paintings lies the belief that what we go through can be faced, carried and perhaps transformed.
Although the work carries something of my history, it must leave enough room for someone else to encounter something of their own.