The ocean has been a constant presence in my life, shaping both my childhood and my artistic practice. Growing up immersed in the sea, I developed a love for swimming and a sense of belonging to this incredible environment. Today, as a regular sea swimmer, I enter the water with a snorkel and camera, embracing a perspective that is both physical and emotional. Beneath the surface, I find a space where time slows, where a shift of light reveals a multitude. This experience is meditative, grounding me in the moment, while also observational, heightening my awareness of the life around me.
Through underwater photography, I capture fragments of this incredible world. These images are not just records of what I see, but portals into a deeper relationship with the ocean, reminding me of its vitality and fragility. They serve as direct inspiration for my sculptures, embroideries, paintings, and drawings—each medium offering a different language to interpret what I encounter beneath the surface.
Porcelain, with its luminous delicacy and inherent brittleness, becomes a powerful metaphor for the fragility of marine ecosystems. Just as porcelain can fracture under pressure, coral reefs crack and bleach under the weight of rising temperatures, pollution, and human interference. In my sculptural work, I echo these tensions—moments of beauty intertwined with an ever-present vulnerability. My embroideries, in contrast, emphasize the intricacy and patience required to render the fine details of marine forms, echoing the slow processes of growth and the quiet erosion of coastal ecosystems. Threads trace what is disappearing, stitching absence into presence.
The paintings and drawings extend this dialogue further, layering colour and line to emphasise our changing coastline. Across these practices, I aim to capture a sense of emptiness—an eerie silence that speaks to the ocean’s ongoing loss. Climate change and human activity are erasing species, habitats, and entire ecosystems at a pace that is almost impossible to comprehend. By translating my underwater experiences into tangible artworks, I hope to make visible the urgency of this crisis, while also celebrating the ocean’s enduring capacity to inspire awe.
At its core, my practice is about intimacy and connection: the bond between swimmer and sea, observer and environment, artist and subject. To swim is to surrender to the elements, to recognize our smallness in the face of the ocean’s immensity. Yet within that surrender lies a profound recognition—that the ocean is not separate from us, but an extension of our shared world. In giving form to its fragility, I invite others to reflect on their own relationship with the sea, to see both its beauty and its vulnerability, and to imagine how we might act to protect what remains.
