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Statement Throughout the formative years of my life I was surrounded by the artwork of my uncle. As a result, I found myself profoundly affected by this imagery and struggled for many years to find a visual language of my own – to put my experiences into perspective and overcome the self-imposed ‘barriers’ I had created for myself. The influence of my uncle’s work, as well as that of many other artists I have admired over the years (Pollack, Kandinsky, Rothko), is still very much embodied in everything I create. However, this influence no longer acts to hinder my visual expression - just to enhance it. In 2003 I found myself drawn back to creating artwork in a driven and determined manner. After 10 years of sporadic periods of painting and private commissions, I reached some clarity of expression and found the visual language I had been seeking for many years. I have always been fascinated with looking at things at close range and seeing images in places that are often disregarded as incidental – patterns in riverbeds, images found in the texture of a sidewalk, or the depth of colour found deep in the underbrush of a forest or garden. My current work is entrenched in a fluidity of form and colour – drawing from small facets of life experience, transposing them into visual forms intended to capture the essence of a feeling, memory or place. My work is about the diversity of landscapes – some small, some large; all of which are reduced to small windows of colour and fluid lines that offer the viewer a focussed glimpse into my experiences and memories. I like to see each of my finished works as small parts of a larger whole – akin to looking at a single tree while all along it is part of a forest that surrounds it. As everyone’s life essentially comes down to a compilation of memories, it is vital to me to convey as much of my experience as possible, through my art – to fashion images that speak to my perceptions of specific moments in my life. |
