Artist statement
I have been working almost exclusively with flower imagery, drawing on the dark significance of their art historical symbolic meanings from the Northern Renaissance and Dutch Still Lifes in particular, to explore issues relating to and arising from contemporary culture, (the same visual language from which the ubiquitous contemporary skull is drawn). The feminine associations and connotations of the imagery is relevant to me with regard to the current problematic attitude towards beauty, and how that mutates our attitude towards love and loving in the modern day consumerist society and celebrity obsessed culture; observations informed by reading and research into developments in neuro science and how what we see, (and how we see it), affects us. In struggling with these issues the paintings become an exercise in the nature of mimesis, an exploration of symbolic materiality, a depiction of surface as insecure, changing, ageing, altered, manipulated, and to varying degrees artificial; subjectively beautiful or repellent.
Qualifications and training
- 2006 MA Fine Art, Central St Martins, London
Solo exhibitions
- 2012 Solace and Torment, Brantwood, Ruskin's House, Coniston
- 2012 'At the Ten Thousandth Sight', Howden Park Centre, Livingston
- 2011 Cornerhouse Projects, Cornerhouse, Manchester
- 2010 'Dreamland', Art Work Space Gallery, London
- 2010 Untitled, The Green Room at the Customs House, South Shields, Newcastle.
- 2008 'Sex Love and Beauty', Customs House, Sandford Goudie Gallery, South Shields, Newcastle.
Group exhibitions
- 2010 Manchester Contemporary, Spinningfields, Manchester and Liverpool.
- 2010 The Anthea Turner Prize, The Union Chapel Workshops, London
- 2009 Art through nature, Kendal Museum, Cumbria
- 2007 'From Outside', six historic City of London Churches, London.
- 2006 MA degree show, Central St Martins, London
- 2006 'Quick and dirty', Bargehouse, Oxo Tower, London
- 2005 'Discord', Temporary/contemporary, London
Private commissions
- 2012 Sheen, Private commission, Newcastle
- 2011 Reveal, Individual Collector, USA
Corporate commissions
- 2011 Three large paintings commissioned for collections, Corporate, London and Europe.
Competitions, prizes and awards
- 2007 Celeste Art Prize (selected), Goldsmiths college, London.
Other
- 2009 Affordable Art Fair, Battersea, London
- 2009 20/21 Contemporary Art Fair, The Royal College of Art, London
- 2008 Artists Book Fairs with the group AM Bruno, Manchester School of Art, and the WolstenholmeProjects., Manchester and Liverpool.
- 2008 AAF, Various venues, London, Amsterdam, Edinburgh,
- 2007 Torturecare.org charity auction, Building Design Centre, London.
- 2002 Untitled, Prudential Insurance's Corporate Collection, London
