ARTIST'S STATEMENT

I grew up in a lovely English village called Cookham Dean, known for its famous and eccentric resident, wartime artist Stanley Spencer whose stylized scenes in the 1940s of Cookham village life and residents have hung in the nations leading museums. He described Cookham as a “village in Heaven”.

My parents, both artists, were also great collectors and childhood holidays were often spent searching for bits and pieces, usually on a chilly beach somewhere.

From a very early age I have collected things and arranged them. Now, more recently, I understand this as a need to give order to things, partly to make order out of chaos but also to show things to their full potential and to highlight subtle connections and differences. Hence, much of the work has a sense of formality and a strong structure even when it is playful.

This constant search for “stuff” which appeals (often for the most obscure reasons), is as much a part of the work process as are the thoughts instigated by the things I collect and then the physical construction of a work of art at the end.

I hope to highlight things which are often inherently humble, maybe discarded, rusted, distorted or faded but have had a past life and use somewhere else and juxtapose those things against something else which may be more precious, ornate or rich in detail, giving each equal value within a piece.it is the contrast between such items which interests me.

I love the element of mystery surrounding old objects – the questions as to their meaning, their origin and age – in other words, their “secret lives”.

Despite a long standing attraction to the small scale, to the intimate, subtle and secret, I am finding new ways of exploring scale, and now expanding into installations using multiple small items to make a larger whole.

For the past several years, I have introduced fabricated steel in to my repetoire, using a bolder, more linear format and allowing for more sculptural, wall based work.

I hope to create a feeling of revelation within each piece, layers of meaning, subtle nuances and still a sense of fun and discovery - the same sense I feel when searching for and unearthing new objects