My work is a response to emotion, memory, feeling and observation underpinned by a fascination with man’s relationship to nature and the juxtaposition of nature and modernity.  I am interested in the scale and capacity of human thought in relation to, and measured against, nature and how this places us within the world.
I studied at the Edinburgh College of Art from 2001 – 2005 gaining a BA (Hons) degree in Sculpture.  I have since been developing my work through drawing and painting and exhibiting extensively throughout Scotland.   I am currently based in Crossmichael in Dumfries & Galloway.

Trust This Journey, oil on canvas, 120 x 110cm, 2015-16

I paint with intent, with a working theme in mind that expands and evolves as the work continues.  When mark-making I use memory and feeling merged and fused with conscious forms.  I usually work on a few pieces at any one time in a variety of scale, oscillating between canvas on the wall or easel, pieces on the floor and sketchbooks on the table.  I like the physicality of painting, of mark-making.  I enjoy the dialogue between pieces when placed next to each other by accident or intentionally and the thoughts and ideas that protrude from this.

This Island This Edge, ink & gouache on paper, 74 x 57cm, 2015

My recent work focuses on death, loss and transition.  I have been exploring this by creating something that I destroy to then create something new.  This could be a painting that I cut up to use the pieces as stencils on another painting, creating sections within it that are ‘missing’ but are making up a whole.  I am exhibiting a piece from this body of work at the international festival of contemporary art, Cupar Arts Festival, as an invited artist for the LIMINAL group exhibition from 18th – 25th June.

Missing 2, ink on canvas, 120 x 100cm, 2016

In my solo exhibition “Interconnections” at the Gracefield Arts Centre, Dumfries in 2015 I was exploring human relationship to nature through childhood memory, our desire to reconnect coupled with our distance from it.  For the exhibition I undertook a residency on the Isle of Eigg with The Bothy Project for which I am doing a talk at The Stove, the artist-led organisation and multi-purpose arts venue, in Dumfries on 23rd June.

Installation views of “Interconnections” 2015

Other exhibitions include “Inscapes”, a solo exhibition at &Collective Gallery in Bridge of Allen earlier this year,  “Detritus & Other Stories” solo exhibition at Iota Gallery in Glasgow in 2014, D&G Out group exhibition at James Harvey Gallery in London 2014, Visual Arts Award Restrospective Exhibition at the John Gray Centre in Haddington 2013.   I am also currently Chair of Upland, a new and ambitious visual art and craft development organisation in Dumfries & Galloway.

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