artist statement

I am drawn to making work about places and my process is painting, drawing and installation.   I believe that painting is charged with meaning that cannot be written or spoken of and is the most exciting and challenging aspect of my practice.  The process of layering, editing and eliminating is my way to find out how I really feel about a subject. It is the most honest and intuitive commentary on my experience of the world.

Since my work is a commentary or response to a site, sometimes an intervention; I am interested in how placement of my work strikes up a conversation between the place and the work.

I ask myself does this place include or exclude?  What are the covert signals embedded in this place?  In its architecture, signage, use of colour, historical narrative, social structures and the community that has emerged around it?

In recording my responses to a subject or place, I have learned I am referring to my own memories and it reveals to me hidden themes, values and critical judgements; such as the role of nostalgia, the opposing forces of security, comfort and belonging and social constructions that imprison and exclude.

By process of delving and drawing I make visual notes, light touch references to the colour and contours of a place. Working with fragments of information, visual artefacts, memory, rumour and intrigue, I am aware I am merging this with my own history.  I attempt an assembling using paint, or sometimes not; which is soon followed by an unravelling and then a re-building using ideas that have emerged through the process.