Artist Statement

"...Even in man-made environments, my eye is often drawn to the lichen on crumbling walls, or grasses erupting through concrete - any sign of nature punching its way through that thin veneer of civilisation. These little rebellions are far more beautiful to me than any polished surface or clean, white space. I wonder about how a wall, or a street, or a city might look after us - when human presence is no longer the dominant force. Take Chernobyl, for example - a nuclear disaster site that has rewilded itself into a thriving nature reserve. Wallpaper peels where ivy grows, damp rises through rotting floorboards, and trees burst through the tumbledown rooftops of buildings that once echoed with the sounds of human life. It’s incredibly poignant and yet somehow remarkably beautiful, despite the terrible event that took place there. One way or another, nature reclaims what was once its own and retires all other things to memory. We have done so much damage to the earth that if we don’t act now - and fast - the wild world will reclaim us too. We know this, and yet we imagine ourselves as somehow separate from nature, working at all times against it. We quantify wilderness based upon it’s worth to us as a species - and if it isn’t useful or convenient we put great effort into holding it at bay. I look for a different philosophy in my painting. I seek beauty in imperfect, wild things - in unkempt plant life and mossy rocks, in stains and weeds and embers and all the things we try to contain, or remove, or obscure. There is no right or wrong in nature - all things are important, each has its purpose and its place. Symbolic meaning or worth exists only as we prescribe it - and the very notion of symbolism itself evolves from collective archetypes embedded deep within the wildest, most primal part of ourselves.

We experience the natural world through its materiality as well as the emotional responses it triggers. We climb rocks, feel the cool of the wind, the warmth of the sun, and carry upon us the remnants of mud and dust and plant matter, prescribing meaning to these encounters and the forces at play. This primal relationship with nature feeds into my work through an alchemical painting language that focuses on the symbolism of material and the transformative effects of the elements. I consider the alchemy of material alongside assigned human notions of meaning, combining these perspectives in unpredictable ways that visualise time, ecology and the collective unconscious, as well as the impact of human presence and absence. Climate change is an undeniable element of all of this. We are, all of us, living on the brink of the world’s next mass extinction event - in a state of pre-devastation. Ash, volcanic dust, oxidised metal, salt - these are all symbols of destruction and loss, of that great Fall we collectively fear. To humans, they are the remnants of violent, devastating events - but they can also represent a much greater renewal process. Fire destroys, but it also purifies; ash chokes the earth, but nourishes the soil; salt protects and preserve, but can also be deadly. The balance of nature constantly shifts between decay and regeneration. My painting process swings on the same pendulum, moving between creation and destruction, expressionism and precision. It’s a fluid process where earth, air, fire, water and ice play active roles, and marks and textures are built up organically and without preconception. Paint or pigment is layered in splashes, daubs and washes just as marks might be scorched, scratched and ground into the surface of the canvas, and the process itself becomes as feral and tempestuous as the raw materials used. The resulting interactions, both material and symbolic, are in themselves a transformation - a kind of alchemy."