Artist statement
Concepts
We live at a time where shifting cultural assumptions have shattered fixed notions of continuity and value. The essential truths that Postmodernism has denied – love, evil, death, the sacred, morality and soteriology have become absent from much contemporary art as they have from wider contemporary culture. Yet Postmodernism’s failure to offer consolations or answers to these enduringly relevant subjects means that as an artist, an awareness of modern developments must be balanced by a dialogue with established traditions and past narratives, and yet not become nostalgic. Terry Eagleton, and Peter Fuller have both argued for the importance of art to be able to tackle these big subjects. Whereas in the past, the artist or thinker had the shared symbolic order provided by religion within which to refer and ground their work, the artist today must find a way of surviving the bewildering plurality and subjectivity that has become the norm, if the truth of what they have to say is to maintain any force or credibility.
My paintings begin as a dialogue with an image from art history – a painting by an Old Master that may then be rearranged or used as a starting point from which to playfully but reverently deviate. My recent work is concerned with the struggle to capture the relationship between the spiritual and the sensual, apparent opposites that are expressed in my work through the conflict of high narrative themes and sensuous painterly marks. The sheer enjoyment of making these marks is not intended to be a Dionysian pursuit that drowns out the appearance of the real through a curtain of subjective, expressionistic gestures, but rather an attempt to transform and redeem the form through the act of making. Fuller talks about how, in the past the artist could ‘transform the physically perceived by the manifestation of allegoric devices like haloes and ‘human’ wings, whereas now this can only be realised through the transfiguration of formal means like drawing, colour and touch’ . The act of making becomes inseparable from the message that is being conveyed through the marks, one of the importance of transformation and redemption.
It is vital that pictures are not sedatives, but are capable of evoking sensation and awakening feelings. I hope to frustrate the process of recognition through treading a path that plays between the borders of figuration and abstraction, and thus slow down the viewer by creating a space for sensation to emerge. I want my works to be sensuously addictive, worldly and material, yet also to have a sense of contemplative silence akin to a religious icon.
Career path
I currently work as an artist in residence and Art Psychotherapist at Trinity High School in Manchester.
Solo exhibitions
- 2012 Mythopoeia, Warrington Museum and Art Gallery, Warrington
- 2011 Manchester Contemporary, Man and Eve, Manchester
- 2009 The Pilgrimage of Lost Children and Other Stories, Bankley Mill, Manchester
- 2009 Theoria, Gallery 286, London
- 1999 Passion, the crossing, St Paul's,, Walsall, West Midlands
Group exhibitions
- 2012 The Wreck of the Imagination, Sarah O'Kane Fine Art, Lewes
- 2012 Manchester Contemporary, (with man & eve), Manchester
- 2012 International Beethoven Project, National Pastime Theatre, Chicago
- 2012 Polemically Small, Orleans House Gallery, Twickenham
- 2012 60 Drawings, Bankley Gallery, Manchester
- 2012 Put your money where your eyes are, Fundraising Auction for Castlefield Gallery, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester
- 2012 Pulse (with Man and Eve), New York, NY
- 2012 Collectible, Zeitgeist Arts Projects, London
- 2012 Digital Romantics, Dean Clough Gallery, Halifax
- 2012 A Private Affair, Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston
- 2011 National Open Art Competition, Pallant House, Chichester
- 2011 The Return - House of the Nobleman, Boswall House, Regents Park, London
- 2011 Deptford X, Core Gallery, London
- 2011 Configured, Signal Gallery, London
- 2011 Jerwood Drawing Prize, Jerwood Space, London
- 2011 Art Works Open 2011, Barbican Arts Group, London
- 2011 Contemporary Approaches to Watercolour, Mall Galleries, London
- 2011 Polemically Small (curated by Edward Lucie Smith), Garboushian Gallery, Los Angeles
- 2011 We are all in this together, Bureau Gallery, Manchester
- 2011 Desire, Portman Gallery, Soho, London
- 2011 The Open West, Glouceser Art Gallery, Gloucester
- 2010 Marmite Painting Prize, Thameside Art gallery, Lanchester Gallery, Coventry, The Nunnery, London, Touring Exhibition
- 2010 The Borrowed Loop, Man and Eve Gallery, London
- 2010 The Summer Show, Sarah O'Kane Fine Art, East Sussex
- 2009 New Paintings (with Genieve Figgis), Queen Street Studios, Belfast
- 2008 Top 100, MCPS/PRS Alliance Building, London
- 2008 New Blood Art Fair, Lighthouse, London
- 2008 Budapest Art Fair, Budapest, Hungary
- 2008 Edge of Figuration, Tregoning Fine Art, Derby
- 2008 Horse Power, Metal, Edge Hill Station, Liverpool
- 2008 Night Thoughts, Royal West of England Academy, Bath
- 2008 Imaging the Bible, Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Aberystwyth
- 2007 From Bacchus to Barbie, Signal Gallery, London
- 2007 Sefton open, Atkinson Art Gallery, Southport
- 2007 New Work, Tregoning Fine Art, Derby
- 2007 Battersea Contemporary Arts Fair, BAC, London
- 2007 Annual Exhibition, The Mall Gallery, London
- 2006 Derby Open, Derby City Art Gallery, Derby
- 2005 Art of Imagination, Galerie Venere, Italy
- 2005 Art of Imagination Touring European exhibition, Lofthouse Galerie / Silos Gallery, Germany / Spain
- 2004 Challenge the Nail, Salon Des Arts, London
- 2003 Art of the Imagination, Gallery 37, London and Kircudbright, Scotland
- 2003 Art and Vision, Williamsburg Art Centre, New York
- 2003 Religion, Art and War, Salon Des Arts, London, Yugoslavia and Israel
- 2002 Eyepoppers, Gloucester City Art Gallery, Gloucester
- 2002 Art of the Imagination,Gallery 37, Cork Street, London
- 2002 Goldmark Gallery, Uppingham, Rutland
- 1998 Images of landscape, Heifer Gallery, London
Private commissions
- 2005 Portrait of M.A.Evans, retiring head of Trinity Church of England School, Trinity Church of England School, Manchester
Competitions, prizes and awards
- 2012 The Northern Art Prize 2013, longlist, Leeds
- 2011 Towry Prize - North of England, National Open Art Competition, Chichester
- 2011 Marmite Painting Prize - 1st Prize, Nunnery, Bow Arts, London
- 2010 Jerwood Painting Fellowship, shortlist, Jerwood space, London
- 2009 Saatchi's Best of British, shortlist, Saatchi Gallery, London
- 2009 Abbey Scholarship in Painting, Shortlisted, British School of Rome, Rome
- 2008 Marmite Art Prize, Studio 1.1, London
- 2007 Sir Leslie Joesph Young Artist Award - Shortlist, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea
- 2007 Celeste Art Prize 2007 - Short List, London, London
- 2002 LUKAS Drawing Prize, Gallery 37, Cork Street, London
Publications
- 2012 Mythopoeia - exhibition catalogue with essays by Graham Crowley and Edward Lucie Smith
- 2011 Jerwood Drawing Prize 2011 Catalogue
- 2011 front cover, a-n magazine
- 2011 Marmite Painting Prize, exhibition catalogue
Other
- 2012 Public Collection, The Progressive Collection, Ohio
- 2012 Public Collection, The New Art Gallery, Walsall
- 2009 Selected for the Florence Biennale 2009, Florence, Italy
- 2007 Artist of the month, Lancashire Living, Monthly Magazine
- 2006 What the World Needs Now, BBC 1, St. Pauls, The Crossing, Walsall
Web links - article/press
Personal website
