Biography

Born in Burton upon Trent in 1967.
Graduated in 1988 from Wimbledon School of Art.

Lived in London for several years then moved to South West Wales in 1997.

Ideas:

My Ideas. June 2008.

I find myself being drawn back to my delicate line making with graphite. My recent departure into Landscape painting has really made me think about our place, where we figure in the grand scheme of things. I am constantly looking at the sky and white seems to dominate my pallette.

Landscape Paintings: 2006-2007

These new paintings are a response to the Welsh landscape, it’s dramatic rolling clouds, melancholy skies and rough churned seas.
If you look at my paintings closely you will see layer upon layer of oil paint. I build up the surface and take away in the same organic
way that time transforms the landscape we live in. Seasons come and go but the fundamental and eternal cycle of nature, her
inherent beauty and obvious majesty is what grips me. To work in the landscape, to try to fathom nature and to strive to understand
the brevity of our own situation is both humbling and inspiring.

The walk along the cliffs in Llangrannog and the magnificent views on the Preseli mountains are my inspiration. These are gestural images, offering a personal view of transcendent nature.

Studio based ideas: 2006-2007

I am greatly inspired by the idea of time and change, visualising memories as web-like gossamer threads drifting in our subconscious. This fragility and tenuousness is captured in my work by the layering and re-working of paint, building up a history of marks in order to create images that are abstract and contemplative.

I grew up on the edge of the Derbyshire Dales , in the Midlands , but I also cherish childhood memories of the landscape of north Wales. The seasons came and went, yet I was aware that beneath the superficial colour changes and man’s efforts at husbandry was a fundamental and eternal structure. I can still see five dense stripes of woodland on a hill in Wales; the trees were left like some ritual scarring on her skin. These markings are typical of a recurring archetype within my work. I find the contrast between the immensity of the landscape and the brevity of the human life-span both humbling and exhilarating.

The colour black figures heavily throughout my paintings and prints. Whether it is a heavily worked painted brush-stroke or a fine graphite line, it tends to dominate; like a calligraphic mark. These are inherent markings, in the way that punctuation is inherent to a written page. The line changes and metamorphosis’s; It can be so delicate that it is hardly visible, veiled under layers of paint and washes, or it can be pulsing in the foreground, reminding me that change is our only constant.