In my work I am interested in exploring both the experience and representation of ‘place’; the way it feels to be immersed in landscape and to move between physical and imagined places.
In my most recent work I have taken liberties with the appearance of landscape. I have played with colour, light, space and, increasingly, remembered forms, to produce images that focus more on expressing my experience and interaction with the landscapes they were drawn from. While in these places I sketch in crayon, watercolour or ink to create an image and ideas bank. I start on a number of small paintings ‘plein air’. These ‘sketches’ and visual notes form the basis of larger works that I paint in the studio. These images are figurative yet draw on elements of abstraction.
In my earlier ‘Postcard’ series, each installation expresses a response to place based on an accumulation of visual images. Familiar elements of a landscape were painted onto small postcards, then assembled to form a multifaceted image that represents how one experiences place. Each individual image presents a realistic depiction, however collectively the multiple perspectives allow us to view the landscape from within and from above simultaneously. As the eye shifts between different focal points a sense of spatial and temporal movement is created.