Latest painting - a commission
Anna - 60cm x 60cm - 25th August 2010

Liv - oil on canvas - 100cm x 60cm - 16 May 10

Max - 70cm x 60cm - oil in canvas - March 2010

Ella - oil on canvas - 70cm x 60cm - Jan 2010

Phoebe Eyes Open - oil on canvas - 122cm x 92cm - 2010

Painting below - Linda (Mum) - March 2009 - oil on canvas - 90cm x 60cm

This painting was Selected for the Eastern Open 09.
It won a prize - from the Wyss foundation

Phoebe looking down - Oil on canvas
25cm X 36cm

See pictures of my solo exhibition at the Benham Gallery, Cuckoo Farm Studios on 27 June to 5 July 2009. The show was called 'Sleeping Heads'. See installation shots.

Selected for Eastern Open 2010, 2009 and National Open Art Competition, Chichester 2009

About me

The painting process is like a ritual that is very gradually transformed over time. Due to schism in my life the paintings have taken a turn towards realism and superrealism - I am currently looking at the work of the photorealists, such as Malcolm Morley, and examining their techniques such as grids and building up the pictures a square at a time. I am attempting to analyse the photograph in an abstract and objective manner whilst staying true to more painterly qualities such as colour mixing, mark making and layering paint. Working into the hair I have discovered many links to my abstract painting. Working like this is a transformative process. It is almost the opposite to my earlier abstract direction - I am working whilst sitting as opposed to standing - it is a different, contained energy - a process that is constructive and time consuming, building complex colour patches with overlapping layers.

The process of my abstract paintings is akin to forms emerging from a blank slate or 'tabula rasa'. Natural forms such as shells inspire the forms and shapes and dried husks that twist and undulate and these shapes form a vocabulary that has been built up over time. The work engages with the unconscious and I find ways of letting the forms flow from a constant engagement with the surface of the canvas. Working in a way that tries to conjure up ideas I usually start with no clear idea for a painting but rather look to my last work or works in a series for a direction. The latest abstract works are formed by taking away paint from a ground colour with a brush thus creating lines which intertwine into shapes and flowing forms. Painting around them with white primer then isolates the shapes - so there is a figure/ ground relationship. This process has come about through doing a series of woodcuts where I am cutting away the surface and revealing lines on the wood, which will be printed.

Previous work has involved using chicken wire as a mask to paint through with gloss rollers or working intensely with an dip ink pen on paper, conjuring up nests and swirling forms that eat back into themselves. Working close up to the surface not totally aware of how the work is progressing as a whole and then stepping back to see what has materialised and then reworking and teasing out structures.