The Artist
My life in the arts has been shaped by two interconnected journeys: a lifelong commitment to painting and the development of my own artistic practice, alongside a professional career dedicated to creating opportunities for others through arts development, cultural leadership and advocacy, particularly for disabled artists. Each has continually informed the other, deepening my understanding of creativity, collaboration and the transformative power of the arts.
In 1978 I was awarded the Scott Brownrigg & Turner Travel Scholarship, enabling me to study abroad at a formative stage in my development as a painter. That experience reinforced an enduring fascination with landscape, architecture and the distinctive qualities that make one place feel different from another.
My paintings begin with an encounter with place. They are rooted in observation but are not confined by it. I am interested in memory, atmosphere and the passage of time, exploring the space between representation and abstraction, illusion and surface. Rather than describing a landscape literally, I seek to communicate its emotional presence through the language of paint.
The handling of paint lies at the heart of my practice. I work intuitively, exploiting its physical qualities through layering, scraping, dragging, staining and reworking the surface. The materiality of paint becomes a means of conveying weather, light, texture and movement, creating paintings that evoke a strong and clear sense of place while remaining open to interpretation.
Alongside paint and place, I have a longstanding fascination with sound and the way it shapes our experience of the world. Every landscape possesses its own soundscape: wind through trees, birdsong or the haunting sound of train whistles heard through the forest. These often unnoticed sounds influence how we remember and inhabit places. Although painting is a silent medium, I am interested in its ability to evoke these auditory memories, inviting viewers to imagine not only what a place looks like, but what it feels and sounds like.
