PROCESS | HOW I WORK
The evolutionary and exploratory nature of process is an integral part of the way I work and what I make.
I work across traditional media including drawing, painting, printmaking, as well as photography and new media, both discretely and in combination.
My current work is created from multiple layers of media (paintings, drawings, and many, many photographic moments). Each piece can contain upwards of 10 or 20 layers, (although some fuse beautifully in only 2 or 3).
I am fascinated by the conflict or symbiosis that can be achieved by fusing ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ media, and I like the tensions created in the working process and the challenges this creates. I also like the idea of using ‘new’ technologies to produce a feeling of age or fragility.
All layers used in the creation of my work are my own.
Painting:
I paint with oils and pastel (and often whatever may come to hand at the time) on canvas and heavy duty, toothy watercolour paper - 350gsm or heavier. I also quite like to work with found materials.
My drawings and paintings are abstract manifestations of a sense of place – and also a sense of time. I was resistant to the urge to ‘paint the sea’ for a long time, because I couldn’t make sense of the compulsion to do so. But I realised that it was the starting point of what drives my current work: an exercise in recapturing a sense of place and time, childhood and experience. An attempt to articulate half-remembered, transient fragments of the past.
Photography:
All photography is my own. I have had many SLR cameras, but now use an old camera phone, a device that must capture a billion ‘snaps’ - frozen memories and moments of time per second across the globe. It seems the perfect, ‘true’ tool to use in my current work, which is largely driven by my experience of time through the mother-daughter relationship; moments captured in ‘family time’. I prefer the immediacy of the camera phone, and mobile applications that can create the work in situ - on the beach, or at the kitchen table. This is a body of work and a way of working that is symbiotic with family life - or it ceases to exist at all.
Technology:
I have no interest in creating a slick, studio aesthetic, or in using the type of tools (Photoshop) that could create the painstaking processes and layers of my work in a fraction of the time. There is truth in process, and the process is integral to the work. There needs to be enough room in the process for those moments of serendipity to occur.
Manifestation: Finished works are saved in digital format and, depending on the piece, can be printed on a variety of materials: from archival quality papers, to recycled materials; aluminium, to acrylic glass panels, and in a variety of sizes: from multiple small works, evoking Polaroids and holiday snaps, to large scale pieces which take the finished work to the edge of - or a touch beyond – image blur and distortion. However, I usually have a particular idea of size and material in mind for each piece.
All work can be printed on archival quality papers or materials as required.
I work across traditional media including drawing, painting, printmaking, as well as photography and new media, both discretely and in combination.
My current work is created from multiple layers of media (paintings, drawings, and many, many photographic moments). Each piece can contain upwards of 10 or 20 layers, (although some fuse beautifully in only 2 or 3).
I am fascinated by the conflict or symbiosis that can be achieved by fusing ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ media, and I like the tensions created in the working process and the challenges this creates. I also like the idea of using ‘new’ technologies to produce a feeling of age or fragility.
All layers used in the creation of my work are my own.
Painting:
I paint with oils and pastel (and often whatever may come to hand at the time) on canvas and heavy duty, toothy watercolour paper - 350gsm or heavier. I also quite like to work with found materials.
My drawings and paintings are abstract manifestations of a sense of place – and also a sense of time. I was resistant to the urge to ‘paint the sea’ for a long time, because I couldn’t make sense of the compulsion to do so. But I realised that it was the starting point of what drives my current work: an exercise in recapturing a sense of place and time, childhood and experience. An attempt to articulate half-remembered, transient fragments of the past.
Photography:
All photography is my own. I have had many SLR cameras, but now use an old camera phone, a device that must capture a billion ‘snaps’ - frozen memories and moments of time per second across the globe. It seems the perfect, ‘true’ tool to use in my current work, which is largely driven by my experience of time through the mother-daughter relationship; moments captured in ‘family time’. I prefer the immediacy of the camera phone, and mobile applications that can create the work in situ - on the beach, or at the kitchen table. This is a body of work and a way of working that is symbiotic with family life - or it ceases to exist at all.
Technology:
I have no interest in creating a slick, studio aesthetic, or in using the type of tools (Photoshop) that could create the painstaking processes and layers of my work in a fraction of the time. There is truth in process, and the process is integral to the work. There needs to be enough room in the process for those moments of serendipity to occur.
Manifestation: Finished works are saved in digital format and, depending on the piece, can be printed on a variety of materials: from archival quality papers, to recycled materials; aluminium, to acrylic glass panels, and in a variety of sizes: from multiple small works, evoking Polaroids and holiday snaps, to large scale pieces which take the finished work to the edge of - or a touch beyond – image blur and distortion. However, I usually have a particular idea of size and material in mind for each piece.
All work can be printed on archival quality papers or materials as required.