2022
Mixed Media on rigid canvas
12 x 16”
This numbered series of paintings has grown out of the artist’s practice of producing highly impastoed and tactile surfaces, developing wonky, fragmented images that celebrate the not-so perfect. Think Art Brut on acid.
Inspired by organised gatherings at the theatre or cinema, these paintings of the backs of heads can be read individually or as part of a group; their attention focused away from us, gazing towards the action. Like Van Gogh’s empty chair, hair becomes a substitute for an unknowable or unreachable person, an ode to loneliness. Each image is a bright and abstracted version of a coiffured hair style; bringing into focus the rituals of grooming and going out and how we present ourselves to the world.
The title references the B-52's song, and its attempts at otherworldly communication.
Magic Slippers
Slippers, Concrete, Bamboo canes
Size varies with installation site.
A sculpture/installation made from interconnected parts. Each part is formed from a slipper, a concrete sock and a 7’ bamboo cane, which may be snapped or broken in places. How the anthropomorphic components are grouped changes in response to a particular space.
These sculptures have been described by the artist as ‘part family, part puppets, part travellers.’ An assemblage of second-hand slippers, snapped garden canes, rubber bands and concrete, the work is an attempt to make an object that ‘is immediately appealing and humorous, whilst at the same time being subversive, broken and visually interesting - a drawing in space.’ These works become a gathering, changing their positions and meanings in relation to different environments.
2021
Body Parts
Through abstracted bodily forms, these works explore the use of lighting, shape and an impastoed surface.
Painted in acrylic and oil using loose gestural marks, the image is built up with oil pastels and fabric.
Beaming
Mixed Media on Canvas
30 x 45 cm 2021
Fat Tax
Mixed Media on Canvas Board
8 x 10" 2021
Poke 2
Mixed Media on Canvas
59 x 42 cm 2021
Outcrop
Mixed Media
on Canvas
9 x 12" 2021
Clogging Up
Mixed Media on Canvas
50 x 50 cm 2021
Grinding Down
Mixed Media on Canvas
50 x 50 cm 2021
Forgotten
Mixed Media on Canvas
70 x 50 cm 2021
Thinking about Beckett
This work addresses themes of impotence and inertia as opposed to productivity and industriousness experienced over the past year. The colour palette is bruised – purples, pinks, peaches and creams, and the execution quick and minimal. These opposing states of activity are often given a moral dimension. Busy meaning good and useful, whilst time wasting equating to idleness.
Two large scale paintings depict frames or portals leading to empty landscapes beyond, which are alternately blocked or blank. They are quiet and still, waiting for some action to occur.
Where do we go when we enter this domain- the space of a painting? Are we able to enter at all?
"You must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on.” ―
Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable
The accompanying drawings present us with an impish figure in motion. A disruptor occupying an alternative space. What is going on? Is time passing here any more useful or productive? Is there a purpose to the activity? Is the imp having a good time or playing a trick on us?
These works separate the domain from the subject to explore human vulnerabilities and how we can find ourselves in these different states of being. Whether tragic or comic, optimistic or pessimistic, doing something or nothing, time slips by accompanied by our inner monologue. How we choose to respond to that monologue is another matter.
Happy Days 1
Acrylic on Canvas
135 x 135 cm 2021
Rumplestiltskin 01
Acrylic on paper
59.5 x 42cm 2021
Happy Days 2
Acrylic on Canvas
135 x 135 cm 2021
Rumplestiltskin 02
Acrylic on paper
59.5 x 42cm 2021
Rumplestiltskin 03
Acrylic on paper
59.5 x 42cm 2021
Rumplestiltskin 04
Acrylic on paper
59.5 x 42cm 2021
2019
Roy Oxlade, Sidney Nolan and Beachy Head
I was very happy to spend a week at the Towner Gallery, using the space as a studio alongside other artists. They have a fantastic resource – the Ravilious Gallery and Collection Library, where you can read about artists in the Towner’s Collection. I was able to produce work in response to these writings as well as in response to the town of Eastbourne itself, sitting as it does right next to Beachy Head.
In 2017 I had seen the Sidney Nolan Exhibition at Pallant House in Chichester, and had been given a book of his works. The Ned Kelly series particularly grabbed me, as well as one painting entitled ‘The Slip’ painted in 1947. It shows a horse falling from a steep path, with no rider. Rigid and stiff, it seems to be suspended mid-air in space and time. This same year there had been a tragedy along the coast at the Severn Sisters. A tourist had been taking a selfie too close to the edge of the cliffs and had died when they lost their footing. There was concern because selfies were still being taken, despite the warning signs.
Roy Oxlade’s paintings and drawings were being exhibited in a retrospective nearby at the Hastings Contemporary (2019). I found his work dynamic and freeing, and was pleased to discover a book of his writings in the Towner library ‘Art and Instinct’.
I agree with his affirmations regarding expressive drawing, feeling for form and its ability to contain insights and vitality.
These influences came together in a series of drawings.
