Thoughts

Over a lifetime my creative impulse has followed dance, knitting, writing, photography, acting, painting, music, printmaking, drawing, sculpture and ceramics. My focus on painting since 2020 is born of its freedom to be portable anywhere, unencumbered by a need for digital access, batteries, collaborators, audiences, electricity, machinery… I find in it an immediacy that mirrors or untangles or interrogates the experience of being.

I am in thrall with many artists, genres and movements from the historical canon. The gravity and humanity of the Old Masters, the genius of the impressionists and the freedom of abstract expressionism all influence my trajectory in painting. I may spend many months down a rabbit hole of infatuation with, say, Rubens, then my interest is suddenly sparked by abstraction and the need to channel something entirely new.

For me, the whole practice of painting has a spiritual dimension and paint is like the mud of creation. From it emerges anything you want. Or just wait and see. Or balance your will with its will. I love the qualities of transparency and fluidity in oil paint, yet their counterparts beguile as well. They need each other. My practice is learning a language, studying the traditions and then attempting to fly again and again.

Themes that recur in my work are transformation, empathy, love of the natural world and human-animal bonds. At this early stage of a career, I work in figuration, landscape, portraiture, still life and abstraction because they all have much to teach me.