Why I paint

At a time when life can seem hectic and focus sometimes elusive, it is my work that returns me to a place of quietude and reflection. In considering the poignancy of small detail, the subtleties of light and the forming of connection, I find my voice and make the work. There are no distinctions or boundaries between my life and my work, it is all connected. It is the everyday observances as well as the extraordinary that influence and inspire me. The child of peripatetic parents, distance and connection have long been both my comfort, and my torment.

Between any two points lies a gap, their distance only defined by their distancing, and within that distance lays their connection.

Within the gap the points may be close, such as is the case with family, self and other, or far, such as in two points in time, but inevitably there is a link. Like most artists, one of the major concerns underpinning my work lies in not only making connections, but in trying to form connections that others might also relate to, and find meaningful. It is the quality I seek most, however for me it is a difficult subject to put into words when painting about it comes more readily. The work I make reflects both ends of my sense of, or search for, connection and filling the void that lies between.

In between I search for the words and images to bridge the gaps, the gap between concept and thing, the physical and the imagined, memory and experience, the intuited and the observed, the tangible and the intangible.

As a source of inspiration in my search for meaning and connection it is the both the phenomenological aspects of light and the ambiguities between our perception of shadow and reduced visibility which produce subtle colouring, and the minutiae and often over-looked poignancy's that I find most engaging, whether it is the physical traces of where others have been, such as the worn-down stone steps at the entrance of a centuries old European church, the ephemeral traces of weathering and time on matter such as the foxing of an old mirror, the lustre of weathered metal, old paint peeling off walls, doors and frescoes, water-stained paper or cloth, rust marks, translucent wax, sagging glass, somebody else's hand print. Traces of others having been, which remind us of our place in an ever changing world. We are connected by what we leave behind. Consider this.