Artist statement

It is four years since I started this blog and the new lines of enquiry that are now starting to take shape. To pin things down and move them forwards i have written an artist statement:

I make room filling installations, objects and drawings (drawing spanning traditional media/dance/assemblage). Between 2004- 2008, I extended my painting practice driven by my increasing realisation of the role of the body in perception. Because my experience of the world is highly sensory, visual and crucially mobile, I felt my work couldn't continue to serve the eyes alone. It remains important that the form of my work encourages spatial participation from the viewer.

In deconstructing painting I increased the scale of the work to encompass the viewer entirely and extended the work into their territory, requiring them to interact with the it on spatial terms. The architectural boundaries of the space replaced the 2D frame as a compositional device, and the work was constructed of painting materials. This work was often site-specific, always responsive to the exhibition space and sometimes related visually to the space outside the gallery/site. It was largely informed by the experience of moving through urban landscapes.

Having made this departure, since 2008 I have increasingly explored ideas relating to movement and by extension, natural forces: balance, tension/oppositional forces, exertion of force on a material of space, rhythm and energy. The work is informed by physical practices including contemporary dance/movement and direct observation of humans in movement and natural forms and forces.

Influences include Phylida Barlow, modernist painter Peter Lanyon (master of articulating sensory, mobile, landscape experiences) and contemporary choreographer Siobhan Davies, a pioneer of the body as a source of information for making visual art.