SEARCH, GATHER, WASH, HOARD, ARRANGE, TIE, BIND, SEW.

SEARCH, GATHER, WASH, HOARD, ARRANGE, TIE, BIND, SEW.

SEARCH, GATHER, WASH, HOARD, ARRANGE, TIE, BIND, SEW.

SEARCH, GATHER, WASH, HOARD, ARRANGE, TIE, BIND, SEW.

SEARCH, GATHER, WASH, HOARD, ARRANGE, TIE, BIND, SEW.

SEARCH, GATHER, WASH, HOARD, ARRANGE, TIE, BIND, SEW.

SEARCH, GATHER, WASH, HOARD, ARRANGE, TIE, BIND, SEW.

SEARCH, GATHER, WASH, HOARD, ARRANGE, TIE, BIND, SEW.

SEARCH, GATHER, WASH, HOARD, ARRANGE, TIE, BIND, SEW.

SEARCH, GATHER, WASH, HOARD, ARRANGE, TIE, BIND, SEW.

(2016)

Artist Statement (2012)

In my current practice, my work has evolved from the production of singular and serial works on canvas and paper to include sited works which, in their realisation, break out of the realm of the studio to convene with nature. These works utilise a range of materials including trees, fabric, rope, string and text, and production methods including painting, knotting, sewing, binding, video and photography.

The first of these new works was created in Kingsdown Wood (December 2011, Kent, England). For this piece I took a length of rope and wrapped it around the trunks of five trees to create an enclosure by drawing a line in space with the rope. I have continued to explore ideas that use this approach to making work through further sited pieces in wooded areas in England and Germany. In each work different elements (such as rope paintings on paper, trees, daylight, weather, the changing seasons) are brought together in a live moment of performance. Photographs and most recently video serve to record and extend the life of this moment, sometimes superceding the moment to become the work itself; they carry within themselves the experience of making, and of being amongst nature.

Artist Statement (2011)

Through painting and drawing I am concerned with making abstract works that are ambiguous in their nature and meaning. I am drawn to the mystery of things and the starting point for my work is always something that I have physically encountered and observed; it is usually something commonplace and it may be a thing or an object, or a place, or an arrangement or grouping of things, or it may be a previous piece of work.

A red and white no-entry sign nailed to a black door, ….a long row of garages alternatively painted in grey and blue, …..yellow markings painted on the surface of a road, …..a piece of broken green glass, …..a length of pink rope trailing on the surface of the sea, …..the scales of a fir cone….

My work is routed in and derives from these sources, but the journey I embark on when I commence a piece of work takes me in a new direction that leads me away from them. Grids, lines, pattern, motifs, geometric shapes and repetition are an integral part of the language of my work, and working both intuitively and contemplatively I employ abstract imagery as an equivalent of poetic expression. I am seeking to exploit and manipulate for my own purposes the physical characteristics of those things that I observe (in particular their appearance in terms of form, shape and colour), and certain qualities that I perceive in them, such as a strangeness, potency or animatedness. I do this in order to tell visual stories of a kind, and to create and explore performative moments, dramas and happenings.