I make paintings which are almost drawings, and drawings that are almost paintings, in the mediums of oil bar, watercolour, and oil paint on linen surfaces. The abstract surfaces reference landscape and organic forms, and are informed by my body’s relationship to the land in particular environments. Through material processes and display I attempt to stammer the visual language of painting so as to unseat its inherited set of expectations. My process draws from an archive of source images, organic forms, and drawings from nature, which I’ve gathered from travels and residencies in South America, Spain and the West of Ireland. In the studio my primary concern is the practical application of materials to surface. Each day is a collaboration with my materials in a committed partnership, with all the attention, care, doubt, and struggle such an alliance entails. Stretched linen is primed with clear gesso, oil bars allow me to draw with paint, watercolours leave immediate stains. The medium is not used to illustrate a pre-existing idea, but rather the work comes into being on the canvas.
The artworks are informed by an embodied closeness and attention paid to the movements and structures of the earth, and are offered to the viewer as an invitation to participate in that attentiveness and care through the act of looking. I therefore seek to create a space to stay with that which we do not need to fully understand, but can bear witness to anyway. My work aims to reward the act of looking – anybody can look at a work of art.