Exploring abstraction.

I have produced a series of works from memory and imagination as  opposed to working from other imagery which is what I usually do. 

I have been drawn towards reduction and simplification in the way that I represent objects and ideas. With the aim of not so much capturing the way that they look but the way that they feel.

I have produced a series of small scale paintings on canvas as well as some ink and water colour works on paper. 

I was keen to explore a sensual involvement with paint in this work and this relates to the initial sensual involvement with place that form the content of many of the paintings. The starting points of the paintings are often places or moments I have loved, been transfixed by or dreamed about - a lonely 3 hour walk next to the sea under moonlight, an apartment that always felt beautiful and perfect, being with the sea at dusk and dawn.

Pattern and repeated symbol play an important role in many of the works. I use them as a mechanism for confusing and disrupting perspective but  also to indicate flow and movement. I often think of the flow of emotion and energy in  a space when I’m making these work and the tension between objects in relation to each other. The movement in these groups of marks also aims to capture a sense of transformation and shift or of information being transferred and communicated.

I am interested in how memory and recollection act as filters for detail yet maintain emotional power. These works are concerned with the emotional resonance of memories or dreams and the movement, sound, time and vibrancy contained within memory. 

 Portraiture 

I continue to be interested by people and faces and have been working on a continuous though sporadic collection of portraits for several years. There tends to be included in these portraits or self portraits a sense discord and discomfort, they are upside down perhaps, or distorted in some way. 

The breath of my stylistic influences is most obvious when I paint people. I have worked from fashion images, book illustrations, old and contemporary masters, photographs of myself and real life. It has been an investigation into portraiture past and present and an unpicking of the representation of many different aspects of humanity throughout art history.