Statement
Within each media that I use [photography, painting and ceramics] I find a different set of possibilities for expression. Painting has allowed me to develop and explore a longstanding fascination and engagement with landscape, my home, beside the river Dart, has been a returning source of inspiration for my painting, which in turn maps my changing understanding of both the river and the landscape. These abstract landscapes are not simply a series of representations, but efforts to express something of this developing relationship - they are as much an internal conversation between myself and my environment as they are external representations. I am continually drawn to the evocative power of texture and colour, layering strokes into patterns and arrangements that give the painting a tactile visual identity
My own life experience has shaped how I respond to my subjects as well as framing the way in which I chose to engage with them. My career in nursing, health visiting and most recently the protection of vulnerable witnesses in the Criminal Justice System has lent me an understanding of the emotional, psychological and physical vulnerability, as well as resilience, of people
- and it is these two opposites that I find myself continually returning to, particularly in my photography project at Sharpham Barton Farm where adults with Learning Disabilities can learn new skills as part of the agricultural team of a working farm. This project allowed me to nurture an understanding of how the camera can depict and convey the humanity of the subject; this work attempts to realise the possibility of the portrait by presenting each individual in the context of their working environment not as a contrived arrangement, but a reflection of their individuality.
My work is not one coherent body of thinking, there is no philosophy that connects everything I do, but rather the work if taken as a whole is a celebratory journey around things I have seen, people I have met and how it affected me. I try to give my work the sincerity, attention, and humor with which I try to live - if the work documents anything it is an emotional, aesthetic and human biography of my own life experience.