RECENT WORK

Having a squint as a child hindered my depth perception. When looking at a landscape separate objects at different distances often appear to me to merge and form one painterly looking body. I indulge this pareidolia or patterning and in the studio make small collages, cutting, ripping and folding paper to create shadows and effects. I use these collages as a basis for my larger paintings which I tongue in cheek call not-figurative paintings because the faces included do not function as faces but help to make up abstract shapes which suggest facial features but are not actually faces at all. In doing so, these paintings playfully undermine traditional distinctions between abstract and figurative art. Our perception of the world is of endless fascination to me. It is a learned experience, practised through life and subconsciously agreed with others to form the structures of our subjective realities. That is not to say that nothing is real. My paintings are real objects. The anxiety I experience when alone in nature feels real but is largely a distortion. I love the sensation of moving delicious oil paint around to explore light, shadow and colour. This feels as real as life gets.