I am mostly self-taught, creating biophilic, tactile ceramic and mixed media sculptures inspired by my life-long personal interest (obsession) with, and professional practice in, the study of non-human life and lives on this living planet.
My background is in biology, ecology, anatomy and veterinary medicine with a particular emphasis on form and function and the interplay between the two.
I also have a particular interest in the blurry boundaries and liminal zones found everywhere, when you look closely enough - from the gradation between the states of life and death (death being a process not an event, biologically speaking) to the difficulty in defining, at magnification, the edges of anything that from a distance looks like an individual entity (cell, organism, species, ecosystem etc).
Fascinations abound.
But the world is not an entertainment theme park, what lives inevitably dies, and we humans are just the same as everything else.
Feeding on and consuming materials/organisms from the surrounding environment is necessary to build and repair bodies.
Reproduction is not exactly voluntary, from a modern legal perspective.
Predation, parasitism, a very large number of microscopic disease-causing organisms, accidents and the eventual decay of age for those managing to survive long enough are inherent in the system.
This is also life.
My small to medium size sculptures are all unique, created intuitively, hand built in clays, my focus on the creation of biologically coherent forms with internal integrity even if the subject is a creation of imagination.
They are a meditation for me, and I hope to share that grounding with the observer - a respectful curiosity, inviting to be carefully held or touched and considered more deeply than the fast and disposable world we have created for ourselves that is causing us and the living planet so many problems.
Please note I am not currently in a position to accept commissions, and communications may be delayed.