About the Artist
Sometimes I will scribble into my paintings and drawings, a primal and personal signature marking ideas and associations which I make as the painting unfolds. The drawing is incredibly important and the scrawlings, like whispers from the unconscious from within trapped layers permeate my paintings.
From observational drawing, sketched ideas or notes and photographs, I will push and pull in an intuitive way in the paintings. Tools include sticks, spatulas, chalk, charcoal, oil sticks, fingers and brushes. At another stage, I will pull back, knock-back and tighten, regroup and reorganise. The image waxes and wanes, associations and things and connections forming or being obliterated and scraped back and emerging again. Everything has a reference point within me, a particular colour used before or associated with a particular time or place.
Originally London based and now in Wiltshire, I’m a contemporary artist creating mixed media paintings, drawings and prints.
Currently I’m focussing on my response (emotional and visceral) to natural environments and humanity changing at speed. Being immersed in spaces, urban and wild, often solitary. Listening, looking. The smells, atmosphere, textures, colours and the emergence of memories which spark recognition and the familiar. Or to notice something unknown and new. The significance or insignificance of my presence there, of human imprint, existential questions the earliest of humans must have asked (but which remain relevant). Gentle curiosity.
Tiny details such as an acid green fungi illuminating a gnarly piece of tree bark. The spotted markings of a Leopard hidden in long grass, picked out by sunlight. Curating what I see, what I don’t include or that which can be manipulated in a drawing or painting. There are so many things which influence a gesture, colour or mark.
The Fragile Earth Series of circular form paintings including works such as Pink Leopard and Red Rose and Ancestor Moon grew out of marking time with the successive passage of full moons and shifting seasons. The concern about climate change and the science of equilibrium (all things in natural balance to sustain life) are explored in the circular compositions where there is no beginning or end to the composition and elements float in the circular space.
My printmaking training gives me insight and fascination with texture and surface, the use of Japanese chine-collé building edges and a graphic juxtaposition to some of the forms, creating offset and tension to the compositions (Icarus, On a Wing & A Prayer). I work with liquid pools of pigment in various intensities of saturation. Layering with large brushes e-sumi style (the bleeding of inks).
I am currently working mainly with oil paints and oil sticks, the richness, softness and plasticity of the medium as well as intensity of colour allow for the complex luminous surface and texture out of which forms and space grow. Other media include graphite, acrylic, pigment powders and gold leaf which add an alchemic quality to some of the works. I am moving between figuration and abstraction which gives points of reference which then disappear into space. I like that disconnect and the play with things that appear and then dissolve.
Upcoming Events
2025 - Wylye Valley Art Trail, May | Details to be published
Exhibitions
2024 - 21st November - 24th November - Solo Open Studio Exhibition showing original paintings and fine art prints. At Chestnut Yard Studios - Salisbury - Wiltshire.
2024 - February - Bath Art Fair
2024 - January - London Art Fair
2023 - December - Christmas joint exhibition with Caroline Paterson, Chestnut Yard Studios
2023 - October - Selected works included in Women’s Open Exhibition, group show at Artizan
2023 - October - Solo presentation of artworks at Smouk Interiors, Bruton
2023 - September - Solo exhibition at the Stalls Gallery, Sutton Mandeville, Wiltshire
2023 - July - Summer exhibition at Compton McRae Farm Shop Gallery, Semley, Wiltshire
2023 - Secret Wardour group exhibition, Wylie Valley Art Trail
2022 - December - Joint Exhibition in Stalls Gallery with Caroline Paterson, Wiltshire
2022 - September - Circles and Squares, group show, Fitzrovia Gallery
2021 - December - Open studio, ASC studios
2021 - October - Untitled Art Fair, London
2021 - Shortlisted finalist for painting category, Visual Art Open
2021 - September - VK Gallery Amsterdam on Artsy and Affordable Art Fair online
2021 - June - Intrinsic Nature, group online juried exhibition, curated by Gita Joshi
2021 - May - Visual Artist Association Online Spring Exhibition
2020 - October - Finalist in the Visual Art Open global art competition painting category
2018 - October - Group Autumn show, Hawks Road Artists, Fitzrovia Gallery
2019 - June - ASC Open studio, Kingston, London
2018 - November - Affordable Art Fair Singapore, VK Gallery Amsterdam
2017 - October - Affordable Art Fair Battersea, London, Pieroni Contemporary Art, representation at Miami Spectrum, Art Rochester, Art San Diego
2017 - ‘Selfies’, Group Show Richmond, Surrey, Kingston Arts Organisation
2016 - October - Affordable Art Fair Battersea, Pieroni Contemporary Art
2015 - October - Miami Spectrum, Art Rochester, Art NY & Art San Francisco
2014 - April - AAF NY, VK Gallery, NL
2013 - December - Miami Spectrum, US
2011 – London Art Fair, Pieroni Contemporary
2010 – Affordable Art Fair, Battersea with Pieroni Contemporary Gallery
2009 - Out of the Ashes solo exhibition, Eel Pie Island, London
1990’s - 2000 Exhibited and sold in private exhibitions in JHB and from private studio. Artwork in several large corporate & private collections including the MTN collection, SA.
1997 – Two Women Exhibition with Daryl Blank, Johannesburg Art Centre