Artist Statement

In my painting I am concerned with the act of relationship, with the self as expressed through the process of painting and with the interrelationships within the work itself. I am interested in change, growth, and personal perception – cycles of decay and renewal – deconstruction and reconstruction.

I choose to explore these ideas through my relationship with the medium; the materials and methods become the dominant driver in my work. I begin with a structure from which I can respond intuitively, allowing my internal dialogue and landscape to come forward.

Through the language of abstraction, I am responding to the inherent phenomenological and personal meanings that are found in colour, form, line – drawing from this vast, boundless, immeasurable space.

Moving between direct and indirect paint applications, layers of applied papers and abraded surfaces, my work explores the elements of structure and gesture, allowing for an edgy tension and elegance to coexist. 

By sanding, abrading, and incising the surface I take away information and then respond to what remains, adding more paint and paper to the surface. This continues as a cycle of deconstruction and reconstruction until the piece rests as a palimpsest of marks and materials, achieving some connectedness that feels relevant for me and evokes an emotional response.

My work has been described as primitive modernism. I find this description accurate, as I’m searching for a quality in my painting that feels earthy, rooted and evocative of another place and time. I’ve always responded to transitional beauty, poignancy and impermanence. It is this gritty beauty that interests me most, where entropy is always in action, transforming and stripping away what seems permanent.