I am a painter with a simple ambition… to create beautiful paintings. I make large, contemporary, figurative works. I am passionate about colour, shocking, vibrant and intense, continually exploring the power it has to invade our senses and influence our emotions. I work on large sheets of prefabricated aluminium, priming the surface then throwing, rubbing, pouring and dripping inks and dyes, glitter and glosses, to form a background. This is then sanded, scratched and distressed, depending on what image will be overlaid. I continually experiment with a multitude of materials, seduced by their substances, fascinated with their movement, individual textures and how they respond to one another. As the painting evolves, I become intrigued with the marks, how the line within a magnified face or body, organically flows. It is as though the image has, at this stage, become a vehicle for the marks. Selecting elements from a photograph and magnifying them to such an extent, creates a new dynamic. The finished pieces are stylised and ordered, the line defining the independent sections of colour and texture. My subjects exist on many levels, portraying innocence yet also the lack of it. The children are story book beautiful, their unique spirit captured and immortalised in that perfect state. By securing a tender moment or snatches of childhood memories, they are incredibly sensual, captivating, reaching out to their viewer. My nudes are sensually erotic, beautifully demure yet subtly provocative. Influenced by Utamaro and the artists of the ‘floating world’ and more recently their influence on the Art Deco period of the early 20th century I am a painter in love with painting; with a passion and urgent need to create.
