I work mainly in oil, utilising photography, digitally broken-down imagery and collage to create a painting. Exploring how interactions happen between different mediums, I also embed and imprint with carefully chosen materials and sometimes tiny objects. Layering provides depths to be explored. Some collaged elements are buried so deep within the paint that they will never be seen again; some are hidden messages of solidarity or torn fragments of maps to represent a displacement. I often start a project with a clearly sketched plan but, when paint hits canvas it betrays an inner truth, be it joy, fear, menace or despair. I want to evoke a pause for contemplation, to focus, not on any conflict or political agenda, but on the resilience and compassion of the human spirit. Some images have reached out to me, like a hijacking, an insistence that I pay attention.
