Statement, Biography and C.V.

• Ideas and Art inspirations

STATEMENT

The paintings and drawings I construct often respond to the constant need to remind myself about my experiences, roots and the places to which I once belonged. I don't feel my memory is something I can trust: it's an elusive world, where time is understood not as a linear narrative but rather as simultaneous sensory perceptions. These images will become my memory in the more tangible form of paintings, drawings and prints which, as time moves on, will always be within reach whenever I feel like going back in time. A fixed visual image, unlike other art forms, cannot unravel its narrative in time. The evidence of process remains in the work, which often has a sense of incompleteness. The paintings seem paused as much as unfinished.

The themes of absence and presence are explored through the act of painting. I'm always excited when I begin a new series of work, but often find after a painting is completed that it recalls a piece of work from the distant past: the painting is often a memory of a memory.

Painting is a voyage, a happenstance disguised as certainty, viewed through the legacy of personal and forgotten histories. My work is concerned with the subtle passages of time, the hidden interval: my intention is to evoke in the viewer an experience of empathy and recognition from their own lives.

BIOGRAPHY

My early years were spent in South Wales, where the landscape and people made a great impression on my visual memory. It was an unstable world: grimy steel industry, pit closures, accidents and the threat of the Cold War. Overwhelming natural beauty and a pitiless, wind-and-rain-scoured grandeur formed the context of my early life.

My paintings don't seek to be a representation. The image is drawn from the inconsistency of memory and the limits of imagination. The elusive world within memory is where particles of life  disperse and cluster: a world where time is understood not as a linear narrative, but rather as a simultaneous bombardment of sensory perceptions. For me, what is particular to painting – for example: time taken, layering, the evidence of the body which made the marks – is the form of mediation which makes possible an investigation of the affective aspects of these issues, in clear dialogue with the theoretical.

For me, it's not possible to separate the manner of the technique from the emotional impact I want to project through the content of my work. My interest is in the convergence of the figurative and the abstract, and in evoking a feeling from the past through the painting process.

C.V.

February 2007	Group Show: Artist Harbour, Historic Dockyard, Portsmouth
March 2007	Group Show: Women's Work, Fairfields Arts Centre, Basingstoke
	Selected: New Art, Birmingham
April 2007	Solo Show: Pittstudio and Gallery, Worcester
July 2007	Selected: Barnet Open, Artsdepot, London N12
November 2007–10	Open Studio: Chocolate Factory, London N22
April 2008	Selected: Artandaid Red Cross Exhibition, Hague, Netherlands
June 2008	Solo Show: DMH Solicitors, London WC2 (Curated, June Frickleton)
October–December 2008	Solo Show: Cloisters, Pump Court, Temple, London WC1
November 2008	Selected: Charity Auction, Narva City Children’s Orphanage, Tallinn
May 2009	Selected Group: C.R.A.C, Hackney Empire, London E8
August 2009	Selected: Cork Street Open, Cork Street, London W1
September 2009	Solo Show: Figures in a World, London Psychotherapy Centre, London NW3
March 2010	Selected Group: Brick, The Gallery in Redchurch Street, London E2
July–August 2010	Solo Show: Landscapes, Sanctuary, Tavistock Centre, London NW3

QUALIFICATIONS

M.A. Fine Art	Middlesex University, 2006
B.A. Fine Art	Byam Shaw, London
Foundation	Bournville, Birmingham