About

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Artists Statement

The reason for me venturing into an artistic discipline is somewhat elusive. For the extent of my memory, I have made art, it is simply all I have known. Born into an artistic family meant subconsciously taking inspiration from the original artworks and prints of renowned painters that decorated the house

Through difficult times in my life, I have channelled concepts of grief and the passage of time into my formal work – focussing mainly on still life with subtle references to the human form and character. This exploration has taken me through studying the gradual decay of fruit, metallic objects, horse anatomy, and eventually brought me back to my found objects – in which shells caught my fascinated eye. My paintings are depictions of objects that although we may admire their beauty, are often overlooked. Shells in some ways are no different from skulls, yet they are usually regarded as a happy and almost naïve decoration.

Using all of my acquired skills across various disciplines, genres and art’s holistic ability, the gradual development of my work has taken me away from the confines of still life. At this stage in my artistic journey, I have found that I do not strive for figurative diagrams. In my future work, I plan to capture an essence of an object with a relatable character that draws upon personal experiences.

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Artists Statement 2019-20

I have always struggled to talk about my work in a way that people will understand it. Communication, in general, has always been a challenge for me, having severe dyslexia and dyspraxia that was only diagnosed when I was 18, made my childhood difficult. Being bullied at school from a young age made me reflect on all my faults. I became withdrawn to the point that I could hardly speak, let alone write. At that point my mother, who is a self-employed artist, decided to take me out of school and alternatively home-educate me. Unlike the school, she didn’t just focus on my faults, she directed me to do what I was talented at, which was image-making, textiles, and most of all, sculpture.

My Art since then has been about trying to communicate and express my negative experiences, which has made it difficult for some people who would rather I just painted birds or something ‘nice’. I have tried to paint “happier” images, but I can not, my best works were done as I was crying, I need to feel the paint. Comments telling me to paint something different, less intense, only feeds my negative experiences. I find that my work does link with some people who have similar experiences, but to make my work less personal and more understandable for those who struggle to find a relation with my concepts. I’ve been exploring new ideas for paintings such as, researching Greek mythology, and Japanese folklore. So many artists inspired me since my childhood for example, the Pre-Raphaelites, particularly the work of John William Waterhouse – the beauty of the stillness in his paintings. With the addition of the more unusual prints of Japanese printmaker Hokusai. I am an avid fan of his more playful work that appears in prints of the figure. My art is something that has grown on the inspiration between these two masters, which can make it difficult to pinpoint what style my art is, having such diverse influences.

I was always encouraged to work from my imagination. It wasn’t until 2018 that I did a sketchbook of drawings from life, to broaden my portfolio submissions for university. before that I had only done a handful of studies from photographs. I have had a lifelong interest in the remains of fauna, I find inspiration while roaming the countryside looking for decaying creatures. My sculptural work started from my interest in these natural curiosities, but, it has just started to apply to my other disciplines in the form of dissections. Studies I’ve done from sitting in on horse dissections, have been applied to my painting skills and fed my style. It has opened my observational skills to a new level, making me think of living forms as, just that – ‘living forms’ skin ligaments, muscles, and bone. As my paintings revolve around the figure, doing these studies has been an addition to my experiments with paint, misplacing the natural forms of the Human body into an impression of something else. I continuously question the limits of the human body and what the figure is in art, balancing the abstract with the figurative. To me, my art is a balancing act.

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~ Thank you for reading ~

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All images are protected under UK copyright law

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