So much of my work is metaphorically autobiographical, exploring the interplay between life and art – my inner world. Stimulated by the exchange and interaction of ideas, I work between the boundaries of reality with imagination. Looking outward from inside; a synthesis of memory, myth, dreams and imagined worlds. My art explores the emotional effects of the unconscious; bringing into play a visual mixture of universal symbols, mysterious landscapes, and biomorphic forms – the cosmic divine.

The process of painting develops in an instinctive way, I have no desire to illustrate my natural surroundings, my artistic approach may start with a physical landscape or a metamorphic mineral, invariably it is a starting point for something ‘other’ to develop – magic ensues from combining what exists into what has never existed before. This synthesis of new evocative forms goes beyond the physical world and when I enter this unknown territory an exchange of ideas, questions, and doubts creates magic in the heart of things, like an offering that asks for nothing and is addressed to no one.

FOR SALES I sell selected paintings exclusively with Gabriel Fine Art and online with Saatchi Art-maskedsphinx

Uncanny Worlds series 2022 onwards

Uncanny Worlds is a series of paintings that explores places and spaces that are enticing and mysteriously strange or fantastic and difficult to explain – an ambiguous suggestion of the supernatural. I am exploring themes that go beyond the ordinary or normal, my language draws from the real world and transforms into a surreal world – things are not what they seem, space and time takes on a new significance as does arousing fear of losing touch with reality. My obsessions with rocks and mountains, coves and caves, contour lines, cells and spawn, are all captured in the canvases, varying in light from night to day that evokes the mood of each painting. The visual language is sensory, visceral and unreasoning. They all flow into spatial relationships that are in a constant state of flux – as if in a dream where the unexpected claims reality, the colour is hyper-real and the underlying structure and pattern of all living things is revealed in a glorious scope of colour and texture. Each painting has several layers and re-workings of imagery – over and over again, gestural marks and lines that reflect the age and weathered time of the natural landscape that are reflected, buried or imagined. 

Atlas Transformed into the Mountains (2024) In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, he talks of the myth of Atlas, who once held up the celestial spheres on his shoulders, and is then turned into the mountain range by Perseus, known as the Atlas Mountains in North Africa. In this painting I have focused on the transformational nature of the theme and used topographical features and striking contrasts of vivid colour and contour lines. I am not interested in visually transcribing the mountains, my hope is for the work to go beyond illustration as such, it is more a search to go further into a philosophical and emotional response and perception of this mythical story. The landscape is seen as an abstract entity, not as a tangible world – in mapping out an imagined mountain range with transparent internal structures; like x-rays looking inside a skeletal structure. The lines are blurred fantastically combining geography, science and art.

Bitches Brew (after Miles Davies) (2024) Miles Davies innovative and progressive jazz album Bitches Brew (1970) is an experimental assemblage of sounds that swirl in different directions at once. It feels unsettling and intriguing at the same time, a discovery of sound that propels forward provocatively with no beginning or end – amorphous sounds that have a dark aura which are encapsulated in my painting. A mountain landscape with threatening dark clouds that overshadow a blue sky with a cess pit of colour and energy brewing at its base. This painting synesthetically connects to the music in an abstract way. At its heart lays an inexplicable magic, captured in a moment of time.

The Rainbow Landscape (after Rubens) (2023) Historically rainbows have had positive associations attached to them for good health, spirituality and healing – a connection between heaven and earth. The Rainbow Landscape painted by Rubens in c1636 recreates a vision of his deep love of the landscape – how he felt about it and what he thought in connection to man’s relationship to it. The animals and people all play a part in this happy event – overhead the rainbow frames them as they reap their harvest. In my painting, I have colour blocked the land in bright colours – the rainbow is not in the sky, but imbued into the land and water itself. Underneath the surfaces are amorphous dark forms that are hard to decipher with contour lines relating to energy fields and high rocky areas. The land underneath is damaged and the colourful surface rather than being a sign of prosperity and nourishment, thinly veils humankind’s destruction of it.

The Metamorphosis (after Kafka) (2024) Franz Kafka’s novella The Metamorphosis has left a lasting impression on me – themes of family and support structures that have become disrupted and the physical and psychological effects of isolation and alienation as Gregor transforms into an enormous insect. Gregor dies in a “noble, but foolish selflessness to a family that never loved him”. I have thought a lot about this book in this series of paintings, Uncanny Worlds. Gregor’s metamorphosis takes on a supernatural significance. It’s a horror story describing the anxious uncertainty about the transformation of what is real caused by an apparent impossibility. What’s left is an uncanny and eerie feeling – a sudden and disturbing sense of not being-at-home in the world. A line divides the canvas into two parts that goes from light to darkness, consciousness to unconsciousness, life to death.

Satanic Butterfly (2022) Phosphorus tissues and cells float in space in a membrane permeated with spawn and fibres – something is transforming into something else but it’s not clear what that is. Masses of cells form matter which then forms a cloak, floating in space and time. A cloak of protection or an outer shell that will metamorphosis into something else? Many creatures metamorphosis into something else – frogs, snails and crustaceans. The butterfly (and moth) undergo a complete metamorphosis from egg, larva, pupa and adult. Satanic Butterfly captures this moment of transformation in time and presents an eerie, uncanny feeling of something beyond the ordinary that arouses a strange and mysterious atmosphere. Colourful layers of marks, lines and textures emerge from/to darkness.

Lost Landscapes 2021-2022

These paintings are of real and imagined journeys to mountains, lakes, and forests. One mountain, in particular, is Mount Parnassus – a cultural and historical mountain range in Greece. In myth, Parnassus is sacred to both Dionysus and Apollo, as well as being home to the Muses and the Oracle of Delphi. Parnassus is known as the home of poetry, music, and learning. The legacy of the mountain is that of a holy one, where the power of divinity is manifested.

SACRED STONES, MAGNETIC FIELDS (2020-2021) 

Ancient people had a way of knowing and understanding the magic that surround particular places, being attuned to these subtle energies that the modern world experience less of, particularly in an urban landscape. Magnetic anomalies exist around particular stones, especially stone circles, and the worn ley-lines – embedded human tracks in the earth that link to ancient sites. I have taken woodland walks and rambles through the countryside to coastal regions, observing the shifting light from day to night and the energies that surround particular spaces inform this series of paintings and drawings. The stone circle is my starting point, working between abstraction and figuration, colour and form and real and imagined space.

All paintings are on stretched canvas and framed canvas boards using pastel, acrylic and spray paint.

AROUSAL OF THE KUNDALINI SERIES (2019 – 2020) 

Collecting taxidermy snakes and images of snakes that have been x-rayed with various objects inside them, I have developed a series of work concerned with form and matter, transparency and largely what’s unseen. Biomorphic forms have emerged, like diagnostic imageries that are not based on science and knowledge, but enacting the tools of scientific inquiry to try and describe intimacy, love, and movement. My painting process has slowed down as I have begun to think about other ways of working. These paintings reference my ongoing enquiry with snake forms and skeletons fused with body parts and organs. Observations on how easy it is to lose a real sense of connection to ourselves and the natural world.

The future is not in the machine, it is in the organism.

21ST CENTURY WOMAN SERIES (2018)

Recent ideas have developed using photo-montages, painting installations and objects that explore the primitive psyche and the psychogeography of a place – the places and spaces that have both a history and memory that I have a connection to are juxtaposed with a female mannequin (dressed with) and accompanied by an array of taxidermy animals from snakes, woodland animals, and birds. Observing how easy it is to lose a real sense of connection to ourselves and the natural world around us, these works ask the question, ‘what does it mean to be a 21st Century Woman?’

All location photography taken in Wiltshire: the stone circle in the ancient Neolithic village of Avebury and the woods and landscape of Salisbury Plain.

PHOENIX & LITTLE WING SERIES (2016-2017)

This existential body of work centres on the transformation of life form, creating a sense of visual intrigue and material presence. The physicality and expansion of scale take on a metamorphic quality that occupies an ambiguous space – fragile, transient, ethereal. The polarities between consciousness and unconsciousness; memory and ambiguity; self and other; death and rebirth (although the dialogue has a personal narrative) has universal significance.

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