Art on a Postcard x War Child UK 2024 Part II

About 

My practice is centred around visual communication; how my personal reflections and memories can be first articulated to myself, then re-presented through art, in tender control of what is revealed and what is concealed. 

While I am a portrait painter, my works are more about re-presentation than representation, as I enjoy discovering existing images to re-contextualise with my knowledge of their subjects, my relationships with them, the shapes and sizes of the surfaces on which to paint, and my perceptions of the world. Each painting thus serves as a product of that endeavour, repeated for different images. 

Common to both painting and graphic design approaches is a desire to be resourceful and minimalistic. I seek to playfully create visual metaphors which evoke emotions and convey my perspectives. My paintings are often monochromatic, celebrating the sufficiency of tones within grayscale. Anything that needs to be seen can be seen with the correct tonal compositions - colour is an adornment. The soft rendering of my subjects allows the viewer to just about see what I wish to convey, then use their own interpretations to bring the image into full-clarity in their minds. I offer just enough to be understood, and enjoy producing works which teeter on the boundaries between clear and unclear, past and present, present and absent, near and far, visible and invisible, 2D and 3D, familiar and unfamiliar, painting and sculpture...and others as I discover them. 

Woodwork is my cherished ally to painting, affording the opportunity to practice being inventive. I repeatedly decide to respond to pre-determined, pre-existing elements, such as found images and scrap materials, viewing them as essential in stimulating and stretching my problem-solving skills. The candour of subjects in found images acknowledges the sufficiency of the mundane, and the natural beauty of my cultures. I'm is deeply concerned about the situation of my work in space, and how my works can activate their sites of encounter to appropriately exist in the liminal space between the location of the image and where the painting is being displayed. This allows my practice to expand to consider thoughtful approaches to framing and installation. All in all I try to create a practice which is challenging, nourishing and fulfilling at every stage. 

You must not reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, resell or exploit any works. In doing so, you endanger our relationships with artists, and directly jeopardise the charitable work we do.