My work
My paintings are created spontaneously, building colours and marks over time, splashes of neon acrylic paint sit next to daubs of thick oil, often applied with my fingers, smeared into the canvas. The paintings are unplanned, free fall, abstractions of line and rythm.
Music and movement are fundamental to my practice. Detonating energy, striking a mood or evoking a memory or image. The physicality of smashing a huge, loaded brush across a surface, or dragging my knuckles through paint is implicit in my work.
I am in constant conversation with my paintings, turning them to the wall until I am ready to engage.
In painting I am striving to capture the very essence of what it is to be alive, to be here, this fleeting life that we are all living.
Process
My process of painting is expressive and very physical. I begin by making small oil paintings, sketches and expressive drawings from photographs and memory. The same motif is repeated over and over in various formats, from small pencil studies with watercolours, to huge canvases. Layers of colour in oils, acrylics, spray paint and oil stick are applied over days or weeks, often working on several paintings at a time.
The abstraction comes through the love of the materials: mixing up a vibrant teal and chucking it across the surface of a work, the smearing of oil stick onto canvas, digging in hard with a graphite stick or literally watching drips of oil paint trickle down a board.... the plasticity of the paint and the smell... teamed up with a flicker of a memory can take a painting into a whole new direction.
Shows
2019 'Identity & Self' Group Willesden
Art Gallery, London
2019 'Art West Weekend' Open Studios
Regents, London
2018 'Art West Weekend' Open Studios
Regents, London
2017 Solo Show NW10 Gallery, London
2008- Open Studios,
2012 Great Western Studios, London