Artist Statement

I paint from a ‘feeling space’, exploring the way in which our psychological atmosphere is created and felt. I translate this emotional response onto the physical surface on the canvas.

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Growing up in Falmouth, Cornwall, my childhood was spent in the countryside, on the beach and immersed in the sea and this has deeply influenced my work. As a Dorset based artist, I work in acrylics, watercolour, oil pastel and ink and my body of work is a profound emotional response to the world around me, both landscape and seascape. A memory is evoked, both of the image and its inner emotional resonance and is expressed through the use of colour and bold mark making. Energy charging, strong brush strokes. Layers of paint are scraped back, more paint applied. This process depicts the evolution of nature and the human spirit. Our combined interconnected vulnerability. The fragile threads that bind us.

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Having lost both parents before I turned 43 and coping, before that time, with my Dad's illness and Mum's Dementia, my work explores themes of fragmented memory, grief and human relationships in connection to place. Contemplating how emotion and memory can be triggered by revisiting places, experiencing the return of feelings connected with a time there and re-living that experience. How memory loss means those experiences can be lost forever to those you shared those times with and learning to treasure your own memories of place and filling your head with colour, joy and positivity.

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Inspiration is complimented by studying work of renowned artists Joan Mitchell, Barbara Rae, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham and Kurt Jackson alongside the emotive poetry of Mary Oliver.

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Intuitive, expressive mark making and energy through colour, my paintings are a reflection of how I feel about the world and I want the viewer to feel as deeply as I do.

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Working from my rural studio near Wimborne, I regularly exhibit my work in Dorset and nationally. I am a selected artist for the Bath Contemporary Artists Fair, an alumna of the Contemporary Art Academy, London and a member of Cosimo Art, Visual Artists Association, Dorset Visual Arts and Bournemouth Arts Club.