I have wanted to be an artist ever since I can remember. As an 'A' grade student in art & textiles at school, I moved into photography, film and video at college. I then went on to study Time Based Media at Hull School of Art where I also studied performance and sound art alongside the film and video. Sadly, due to the extenuating circumstances at the time, it meant I could not complete the course. The creation of art went out of my life completely for many years until I realised I could not continue to live without it in my life. And I wanted to live.
When I first started making artwork again I went back to drawing and painting. However the last time I had painted it was heavily influenced by studies, still lives and realism. Now I suddenly wanted to use it to express everything that I was feeling with a sardonic twist. This was miles away from painting sheep's skulls and bowls of fruit. To start with I could only work with black and white, but overtime colour returned to my work. But I was taking huge amounts of time producing large oil paintings from my sketches and wanted to find a smaller way of satisfying my creative urge. My work now had a clear style which seemed to have developed out of nowhere. I had done some silk painting in the past and found my style really worked with that medium. And I could keep up with producing the amount of images that where in my head.
I am currently working with silk paints and lino prints, as my work also works well with the strong black and white contrasts. My work is mainly figurative and features themes of the supression of women, domestic violence, love, romance, hate, depression and trauma. But I have also diversified into illustration for a book that I've written - below!
I have exhibited in various venues locally and in London. The latest London exhibition was part of the Parallax Art Fair in La Galleria in Pall Mall. And my work has been sold in the UK and abroad.
I have also written and illustrated a book called 'The Cat Inspector' which is available to buy on Amazon and has also been released as an ebook in the itunes bookstore. This features my silk paintings as illustrations.
