Often shaped by ideas of the Absurd, my work is a clarion call for personal autonomy and freedom and embodies a plea for the release of one’s potency in a world that increasingly restricts, castigates, and confines.  Ultimately, I make my art because it is the art I would like to see, I am trying to provide a visual counterpoint to what I see so much of around me.

I work alone in the studio, usually to a soundtrack, for where possible the whole day, giving myself a chance to warm up thoroughly into the work.  I use acrylics for their versatility and quick drying properties, as well as pastels, oil sticks, Indian ink, and charcoal.  I love rubbing back multiple layers, so the canvases have real texture and depth.  This is particularly useful as I don't pre-plan my paintings, meaning there are often changes of direction whilst working.  I love being able to see traces of previous marks in the background of the finished piece.

My work has recently incorporated metaphors relating to the natural world and an awareness of one’s mortality, enriching the soup that feeds the process.  I am moving into looser, more textural work, seeking  to evoke the fibrous, sinewy essence of living tissue – human or otherwise – amidst slightly ethereal landscapes.  The biomorphic shapes radiate a sense of predation or fecundity, or both.  These dislocated and abstracted forms give the work a surreal mood which I find very expressive.

As someone who resists traditional representational painting, I aim to evoke a sense of the ‘id’ in each of us.  My work reflects this raw, unconscious energy, where recognisable figurative contexts dissolve, and abstraction takes precedence.

I reject self-imposed restrictions in terms of style, and always take myself out of my comfort zone when working.  I have tried in the past to force my practice into a more rigorous visual consistency but have since realised that the roots of the work remain constant and that is what holds it together.  The content of the paintings however is free to be shifting, evolving, and spiralling into new areas.  This is what keeps my relationship to the work fresh and vital.

Visual References: Francis Bacon, Adrian Ghenie, HR Giger, Basquiat, Arthur Rackham, films of David Lynch, David Cronenberg and John Carpenter.

Ideas References: Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Camus’ Rebel & Myth of Sisyphus, The Dice Man, David Attenborough’s ‘Life’ series of natural history documentaries.