Artist Statement

My practice focuses on exploring landscapes, emotions, and the interplay of light and colour to create a sense of contemplation and connection to nature. Through my use of colour and gestural mark-making I invite the viewer to engage with the emotional and sensory impact of feeling the landscape. As a consequence this encourages contemplation of the sensory experiences of the landscape around us..

Preferring to work on large canvases I paint in a layering process. I start by creating a ground with thinned-out washes of oil paint, creating drips and splashes along the way. I work on a number of canvases at the same time, each one feeding the next. With thicker more opaque paint I paint out certain areas, or enhance others, constantly editing, until a composition begins to emerge. I use brushes, rags, my fingers or palettes knives to create soft layers that result in an illusion of texture. These built-up layers eventually develop into an abstracted view of the landscape. The more you look at them, the more entities you see, resulting in a different take on it each time.

Titles are really important to my work. I keep a notebook of titles as I think of them, and when I’ve finished a painting I will often refer back to this list. Other times the title just comes organically as I look at the finished piece. I feel that referring to the title subtly opens another element to a painting that you may not have seen or thought about.

When I paint I am immersed in the painterly experience. By combining my technical skills as a painter together with my emotional response to the landscape brings an immersive and reflective quality to my work, for both the artist and observer.

My most recent body of work, titled "Everything Smells Different When it Rains” explores ideas around our connection to nature. The title itself serves as a poetic reflection of the multi-sensory experience that is triggered by rainfall, where the aroma of soil, flora, and air undergoes a metamorphic alteration and everything takes on a new perspective. These paintings are deliberate departure from previous works, where I have introduced a new colour palette and a more abstract compositions.