I paint primarily in gouache as it allows me to explore my love of collage but create my own characters, and thus, my own narrative. Whilst my paintings have been described as a take on the Japanese idea of the ‘floating world’, for me they owe more to the Buddhist philosophy that all phenomena are mere appearances to the mind, that ‘colour’ and ‘form’ are merely imprinted in this life, and ultimately do not exist outside the mind that perceives them. Add to this, the pagan tree of life and the cyclic year, the paintings then become a metaphor for a world in transition, an expression of that ungraspable moment where Taxonomic forms interact with images from popular culture to give a dialogue to the journeys within this human life, and beyond.
The works of Alan Davie, Yayoi Kusama, Niki de Saint Phalle, and Richard Dadd have had the greatest impact on my own pursuit of expression. This relationship between colour and form in my paintings has equal importance: it’s about how they interact on paper; it’s their combined story; and ultimately, it’s about the actual craft of painting.
Midnight in the garden of earthly delights; 2016 – 2020
Often I stop, and look back; 2020 – present
