artists register

Statement

My work falls broadly into two areas - abstracting landscapes and looking at the subversive or permissive way we use toys to instruct our children.

When dealing with landscapes I like to collect data - maps, rainfall charts, colour patches, photographs and then overlay all this information. A painting may start as a fairly representational view, but then I will map out an aerial plan, draw in some of the macro detail or find key shapes in the landscape. Each layer covers the previous, leaving just pockets - fragments of information. In the end I hope what is left is a feeling of the place rather than a recognisable view- small pieces that add up to more than the whole.

I have become increasingly aware of the toys that my children play with on a day to day basis and how consciously, or not, we prepare them to deal with the horrors and darkness of the adult world. From monsters in cartoons, supposedly cute but inherently aggressive japanese manga characters, Power Rangers and brutally violent Warhammer characters, through sexually overt but submissive dolls such as Barbie or Bratz to letting them desensitise themselves in front of Ben 10, Lord of the Rings and horror films. Anaethetised by incremental shifts in the level of violence and cruelty, maybe by adulthood they can watch the six o'clock news and let Afghanistan, Iraq and the real horrors of life wash over them - leaving them untouched to get on with their own lives.

Biography