I am a colourist and moving very much towards abstract expressionism and colour field painting. This on-going series is called Complexity and Calm – the work comes from my continual obsession with colour – blocks and stripes of it; for this is what I see day to day when I distill and simplify my view of the landscape. If we are far enough away from the horizon, the view will appear pretty flat; this to me is calming, like looking out to sea is calming. This feeling is what I am aiming at.
I obsessively re-create, precisely, the colours I see in the landscape – man-made and natural, this is where I start when I am ouside looking and sketching with paints. Oh, and I also add some pizazz with fluorescent pigments.
In my studio I then simplify and extract what is important to me – and that is stripes and blocks of colour. If we are far enough away from the horizon, the view will appear pretty flat; this to me is calming, looking out to sea is calming. This is what I am aiming at.
PLA (a film made of starches) appears in all of this work. We all know we have too much plastic waste; this is my reminder and acknowledgement of that fact. I am an activist, with a small a – I want my work to have beauty, but underlying it is protest.
My aim is to encourage the viewer their own space for contemplation and meditation, creating their own narratives. All work comes form my travels around this globe, but I don’t describe a scene. I want you to do that.
