MA SHOWS

My art practice initiates through walking in natural environments and is about my sensitivity and relationship with nature and conscious connection to it. It is also about my emotional attachment to places and my representation of them through use of materials I am drawn to, often found in and around Bristol, Bath and Ireland. Importantly, materials selected for use are of natural source, maybe processed by humans but are abstract, found/discarded and have had another life. Its past life is referenced in its use as ground and background for painted images or as material for sculpture. I see a natural object, a piece of discarded material, from a natural source, some processed by humans, and my imagination runs wild.

My ideas come from looking and seeing. I walk, I look and find natural objects I find beauty in their colour, shape and form; they are selected to represent life-cycles, transition, fragility of life. Currently, the natural objects are found on the beach of Tra Bui in Ireland, they are referred to in my creative process and in the outcome of my art.

Selected natural objects are photographed in situ; important, as their environment relates to a painting's background through selected ground, adding to the narrative within my art, and brings life to my paintings. The digital still images of natural objects are moments captured in time. Images are archived, but I later relive the moment they were found in my painting process, as I wipe, rub, scrape, scratch and remove paint in a similar way to the sea washing in, revealing, dropping objects on the shore as I reveal the natural woodgrain in plywood.