Practice
I work primarily with landscape and the human form with a particular interest in the English landscape and seascape.
I paint places where I have a connection either personal or through ideas and thoughts that interest me. The Humber Estuary is a major source of inspiration and I use the space it provides to explore these thoughts and ideas.
I am interested in the evidence of the past and how this affects what we observe and how we recollect it. How do we determine what we see? How do we “construct facts”?
The connections or disconnections of a place to personal history, to past events or even back to classical references, provide a source of imagination for the work. As does getting close to a lost time through signs and lines from the past that are still present today – graffiti type marks in Paleolithic caves, early writing, and other marks and scratches on artefacts and surfaces.
“A meaningful connection to the past demands, above all, active engagement. It demands imagination and empathy, …. We must enter past worlds with curiosity and respect. When we do this, the reveals are considerable”(What is History, G. Lerner)
“Memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theatre” (A Berlin Chronicle 1932, Walter Benjamin)
Opportunity
I studied fine art at Sheffield Hallam University and show regularly across the region and beyond including Sheffield, Brighouse, Whitby, Holmfirth, as well as Derby, Barnsley, Leeds, Nottingham, Manchester and London. I have shown work internationally including in shows and private collections. I sell work on-line through the London based on-line gallery: New Blood Art.
In addition I have received a number of awards to undertake research projects at sites of historic significance including: classical sites in Greece and Turkey, the Celtic Roman Rig in South Yorkshire and the Neolithic site of Arbor Low in Derbyshire.
My studio is at Bloc Space in Sheffield. The New Blood Art on-line gallery sells my work
