Coming Home
This is a series of paintings from 2020, concerned with the powerful yet vulnerable energies that emerge in the process of relating to each other. It can be personal and exposing. Ultimately, it describes the paradox of searching externally to find the deeper layers of life that happened to be there within you all along.
Opening Song
Oil on Canvas, 122 x 152 cm, 2020
There is an energy to this painting that is at once beautiful yet powerful. I chose the title 'Opening Song' because to me, it is a composition of different voices each playing their part to describe the movement of the paint.
I hope viewers will feel moved by this painting. Perhaps there are references to love, nature, a sense of being uplifted... it is a painting to get lost in.
Coming Into View
Oil on Canvas, 122 x 152 cm, 2020
This painting is inspired by the feeling of having peeled back multiple layers to find some kind of sense of coming home to yourself. As with all of my paintings, it is based on a personal journey of becoming.
I hope viewers will connect to a sense of seeking, glimpsing and almost peering through and beyond to arrive at something still and beautiful and timeless. I hope for this painting to inspire introspection and peace.
To Be Known
Oil on Canvas, 122 x 152 cm, 2020
This painting is from a series of three: To Be Known, To Be Honoured, To Be Held. This is a delicate yet powerful painting, which rewards time spent in contemplation of it. I believe this painting speaks of vulnerability, but not as a weakness. It says something about the notion of being 'all in' and how that can feel exposing, yet invites intimacy.
I use a combination of painting and pouring techniques to make my paintings come to life. The process is very much a conversation between my ideas and the direction that the painting invites me to follow, on its way to becoming the finished artwork.
To Be Honoured
Oil on Canvas, 122 x 152 cm, 2020
This is the second painting in a series of three: To Be Held, To Be Honoured and To Be Known. With this series, I was trying to understand and explore the nature of these essential parts of relationships. Each idea involves a push/pull dynamic, such as wanting to be seen and yet wanting to hide. Our contradictory impulses are something we might resist but they are what make the fabric of our connections to others.
All of these themes tend to be in my mind as I paint, but ultimately, they are abstract paintings and therefore, up to the viewer's own interpretation.
To Be Held
Oil on Canvas, 152 x 122 cm, 2020
I painted this original oil painting with very bold gestural strokes of the paintbrush, as well as using a pouring technique that I have developed. I use a combination of linseed oil and white spirit to disperse the pigments. The result is a collaboration between my intention for the composition and the paint behaving according to its own nature. I like this dialogue and it means that the resulting painting reveals something of itself to me, as though I have been asking a question.
On first glance, this may look like I have only used one colour but there are other subtle shades of yellow and pink within the painting, which add dynamic values.
I hope the viewer will find this a versatile painting, at once striking and arresting as a bold statement, which also rewards further contemplation.
Untitled
Oil on Canvas, 152 x 122 cm, 2020
This painting combines many different techniques and styles of mark making. I enjoy the contrast of using very diluted oil paint (mixed with linseed oil or white spirit) alongside very thick paint straight from the tube. This affords me a language to describe the energy and the movement of the paint across different parts of the composition.
I hope the viewer finds a quiet beauty in this painting, which is at once abstract yet richly personal. I believe it is a painting that gets deeper with time.
Please note, I always wait for just the right title to arrive in my mind, so for now this is listed as 'Untitled' but I will update that in due course.
Hold in the Light
Oil on Linen, 120 x 160 cm, 2020
My painting style is intuitive and seeks to give form to that which is beyond words. I am interested in the nature of reality and the idea that we each experience reality differently. Yet there are places where we can meet each other and feel like we are connecting on a deeper level. Art, music and poetry do this, as well as relationships. All of these things inform my practice and I draw inspiration from each in the moment of composition.