I create images to try to make sense of the world as I move through it, mindful always that the past affects my every experience. In doing so, fragmented landscapes and interiors emerge that cannot be placed in any specific time or location. Even so, they are somehow recognisable both to me and (surprisingly) frequently to others. You may feel you know that place - that you've been there, even if you can't quite fix where or when. You may see things or feel a resonance that others cannot, yet miss elements that might seem so obvious to someone else. Paintings as portals - it's a fascinating thought.
It took me a long time to understand how the past can ground you or unmoor you in the present. I always thought my paintings, drawings and prints were simply about my response to places and their histories. I now realise just how much those responses have been shaped by memory and association, both real and imagined. We are the sum of the stories we tell ourselves, as well as those that others have told to or about us and we interpret the world around us through that filter.
Recent works draw on my own family history, its artefacts and ephemera, becoming more rooted in objects than landscape, yet that uncanny resonance remains as I rekindle my forty-year-old obsession with still life and the domestic space. Ultimately, art is always about time.
Back in the early 1980s, I was studying Fine Art under the guidance of Graham Boyd at the Hertfordshire College of Art and Design (or St Albans Art College as everyone knew it at the time). As well as painting and drawing, I particularly enjoyed printmaking and sculpture; both occasionally make a reappearance in my practice. Following a move from Hertfordshire to Suffolk over 30 years ago, I re-trained as a Local Historian at the University of Oxford and wrote a couple of books about landscape history but returned to making and teaching in 2004 when I founded a community arts organization, West Suffolk Arts Centre CIC. Since then, I have led innumerable workshops, curated projects for Arts Council England, Suffolk County Council and delivered arts events of various sizes for a number of organisations.
For the past decade my work has focused mainly on photography, sound art and the moving image, alongside being a creative producer and teacher. Then, two bouts of serious ill-health prompted a re-ordering of priorities together with a reappraisal of my practice. Now I am excited to have rediscovered my love of mark-making and of applying colour to a flat surface. I like to think of myself as multi-disciplinary these days!
In 2023 I was fortunate to have my first solo show of paintings in over forty years. The response was extremely encouraging. Being a member of Suffolk Open Studios for the past few years definitely helped to give me the confidence to accept the opportunity at the Angle Gallery in Bury St Edmunds when it was offered and the SOS group shows are always amazing events to be part of.
It would be lovely to see you during the Open Studios event in June - I realise I'm rather on the edge of the map, my studio being close to the Norfolk border - but if you do make the trip over here there will be lots for you to see and I might even do an impromptu workshop or two!
