Background to my work

I work in oils, with perhaps just three or four colours. My subjects are mainly abstract and semi-abstract land and seascapes. I’ll work with a palette knife or a rag, sometimes my fingers, to blend and drag the paint. I might also add strands of rope fibre or ground-down coloured slate, sheep’s wool or sand to add texture. At the same time I might also use a knife to scrape or gouge the work to create lines of movement and dynamic. 

I work to communicate the restlessness that I feel is always there in a scene - a continuously shifting presence of sound and movement. I want to make work that is far more than a representation of just what can be seen. To me, work can only be said to be alive when we can also hear and feel what’s happening so that what we experience is something almost filmic. For me, they’re stories and I paint as a story-teller. 

I work in a studio rather than outdoors. The outdoors is where I’ll go to ‘gather the stories’ that become the work.