Strata

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.

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.