Statement

My works revolve around the exploration of amorphic landscapes and scenarios which delve into themes of figuration, phantasmagoria, the interconnectedness of nature and the relations within our bizarre yet beautiful existence. Through the use of collage and painting the mediums begin to morph, merge and separate into one another; perception is blurred and the mind begins to wander.

I am intrigued by the element of chance which is prevalent within the process of painting. The central element of chance is taking one thing out of context and placing it into another context, showing how meaning is fixed to a site and how meaning is shifted when the location is changed. The result is free association: what does the subject mean in its new place? For me, the use of chance and free association is an important part of my process. I work with small pieces of most usually ambiguous segments of collage which hold visual information in which I expand the painting from. These pieces of collage act as a seed within my work, allowing a boundless and therapeutic approach of expansion and morphism within the painting process. I work with imitation and repetition of colours, textures and patterns whilst also using the paint to create visuals that explore the possibilities of an alternate existence beyond the photographic constraints.

The possibilities of exploring organic forms and existences is seemingly never ending, the living world is undeniably complex and the vast majority is still unknown to most of us. This provokes possibilities of creating strange worlds, those hanging onto reality by the thinnest of threads; biomorphic forms allowing one to play with ideas of fantasy and fiction, configurations of complex matter which question our understanding of our own living reality and this natural world which can be so seemingly alien. I thoroughly enjoy using paint in the exploration of surfaces- from fleshy figurative matter morphing into textural earth born material embrace the unpredictable possibilities of an internal gaze; reflected by a process that embraces chance, error, and vulnerability whilst exploring the interconnectivity of structure and identity to our physical surrounding.

An initial stain may guide its way to one form, yet once it begins to invoke this form, the direction is changed and a new form becomes intertwined, expanded, extended and decontextualised until the matter is indistinguishable. There are many possibilities to be found in the painting itself as new pathways and possibilities evolve. 

Through miscellaneous compositions and delving into a more automatic approach to painting, I have been searching for this quality within my paintings in which the viewer, myself included, experiences a sense of obscurity; the wandering of our associative minds is to be left at an open end.