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ARTIST STATEMENT
The subject matter of my paintings is rooted in landscape and coastline.
The paintings generated by a sense of place and a sense of belonging. My eye
zones into a familiar perch of land or shore working on the compositional
possibilities, my heart generates the emotional response.
My paintings are devoid of human presence. Despite their mood of absence,
the images I hope suggest a welcome seclusion rather than lonely isolation.
In an age of constantly shifting movement, of T.V. and P.C. screens, where
landscape is often fleetingly seen through the window of a moving car or
train, I attempt to create images of substance somewhere for the viewer to
be at peace and I hope that day by day my work yields up a little more to
the viewer.
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The memory boxes are personal, they came about as I began to question the
need to justify the narrative starting point of the painting as I questioned
what was inside and what was outside the painting, why that field or rock,
what inspired that particular choice?
Memory is a place that I often visit. Working in isolation my studio is
packed with boxes of old diaries, maps, bric-a-brac and bits and pieces of
broken pottery and stones that I have gathered over the years. These
miscellaneous trinkets, many found in places which inspired the paintings,
are used in my memory boxes to connect the past with the present. Art works
in their own right, the memory boxes allow me to put order to my past.
When I was younger, I was very conscious of attempting to connect to the
past and to continue tradition, I no longer see things like that. Tradition
is important, tradition however is merely a way of ordering the past. The
way we view that past depends on where we are and what we are doing now.
Through my work I am putting my own mark down, claiming this time as mine.
My hope is that my work will endure.
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