My work, whilst essentially abstract, nevertheless draws inspiration from specific forms in nature and my environment, which are translated into explorations of form, line and colour.
Though traceable to their natural origins, my work relates to them in an oblique or abstract way rather than an illustrative one.
I start by drawing my surroundings, exploring sensory properties in a range of techniques: observational drawing, analogue photography and idiosyncratic mark making. These recordings are further abstracted and evolve through the monoprinting process, with no two prints ever being the same.
It is important for me not to be straightjacketed by repeating solutions; instead I work intuitively and experimentally to balance tensions and harmonies in a visual language that oscillates between the biomorphic and the geometric, but never settles definitely on either.
The contingent qualities of ‘place’ and my interpretation of an environment generates impulsive in-the-moment decisions and pictorial inventions, which I reflect on and refine later.
For example, a windy location might result in a series of abstract mono-prints using oscillating, pulsating marks and overlapping shapes.
The photographs and other media made on site will combine with memory to create an abstraction of the lived experience - the viewer might not see these resemblances, but they are essential to the evolution of each series.