Artist Statement

I am a visual artist based in the North East of England who explores personal and historical memory, emotion, motherhood, traces, place and time.

To realise my ideas I have used photography, soft sculpture, light and installation, but have concentrated on painting and drawing for the last 5 years. I often use geometric shapes to reduce ideas and visual stimulation to abstraction that invites the viewer to engage with the felt. My work is inspired by painters such as Briget Riley, Beatriz Milhazes, Agnes Martin, photographers such as Martin Parr and William Christenberry and conceptual/installation artists such as Susan Hiller and Martin Creed.

Each painted work is an emotive response often using a visceral and textural method confined by a hard edge. The process begins with an idea, which may be captured on the back of an envelope but is as likely to remain in mind. If I return to it again and again, the work comes into being and demands a physical manifestation of itself. Ideas lead from memories both private and shared, emotions, the essence and fragility of time and place from a feminist perspective. My approach to making work is often messy, reflecting the goings on in my head and the need to make sense of the feelings and emotions and create order. The process has a ritualistic grounding where mixing paints, preparing surfaces and applying paint are visceral events in themselves. Underpainting and layering with my hands takes place and colours are subtly textured.

Acknowledging the hard edge painting school of California and the likes of Dora Hauer, I follow a hunch or memory in terms of colour choices and use of shape but I explore the hard edge using subtle textures within the solid colours. This brings to the fore the hand of the artist, quite literally as the paint is applied not only by brush but by hand and fingers. Rather than a flat plane where the brushstrokes are unseen, the process I use to build up layers of colour is obviously hand made.

The initial experience for the viewer of the hard edged nature of my paintings is at odds with the often sensual and enigmatic topics of femininity, motherhood and memory. However, the use of soft and subtle textures in the work and the presence of the hand contrast with the obvious control of lines and borders.

Conceptual artist Susan Hiller has been a particular influence in my development. Work with colours and dreams, place and shared memories are integral to my practice. Agnes Martin, both her final works and her process have had an influence on me and Martin’s need to remove the mind from the process resonates with my work. I aspire to prise gut feeling and memory in mixing and selecting a palette. The paintings take on an almost meditative and ritualistic process as the absorption in the colours, textures and combinations becomes all consuming in an effort to communicate internal feelings.