Artist’s Statement

 The images I paint are conjured from many different elements. Usually starting with a dream or memory, I then ‘mix’ it with source material which accumulates in my studio. This could be anything from images found in news media, films, patterns found in nature, children’s book illustrations, family archives, imagined landscapes, art history, or old photographs.

I reference the material during the process, but over time the paintings take shape of their own accord. I let chance leave pigment traces of oil paint on the canvas so that abstract areas form.

Symbolism emerges from this ‘visual residue’ after sometimes adding elements of figuration. The original starting point is only tangentially referenced in the final image.

The viewer may be reminded of the intimate and profoundly unpredictable experience of dreaming.

My work taps into the natural tendency in all of us to create narratives in response to the visual world. The viewer then projects their own associations in the tones and forms.

I don’t paint other people’s stories per se, but my narratives balance on the fine thread of the para fictional world. Between the real and imagined; the frightening and the beautiful. It’s a precarious place we all share and inhabit; where the politics of emotion and memory prevail.

I completed my MFA at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2002