Statement
I am a natural researcher; always looking for structures in landscapes.
Travel is the key in the development of my work. It is a major driving energy of my inspiration: reacting on what I see and experience, a fusion of observation and emotion. In every shape or surface of a natural element I can feel a complete landscape.
With my work I endeavour to create a landscape-like atmosphere but without reference to anywhere specific. To do this I make composite images and installations using colour schemes that recall an association with nature.
I call my work ‘installations’ as they draw on elements from a variety of art disciplines (painting, photography and object making). In my interior installations I present my work in groups, blocks or planes, in interchangeable compositions of work and materials. Outdoors, my work can be an intervention or addition to the landscape, to create a new image.
A physical connection with a location is essential for me in creating new images. The idea of life cycles is key in this, bringing impressions and materials from outside indoors and making paintings and objects in the studio, taking them outdoors and photographing them. In this way nature is as a decorative background for the objects. Often an object stays in nature and naturally decays with only the photograph of the object remaining. On other occasions I take objects back and present them in an indoor gallery environment. Working physically in an environment this way, heightens my awareness of nature which stimulates my creativity.
The idea of a life cycle can also be found in the use of natural and old materials.
Their appearance and characteristics emphasise the atmosphere of quietness and the transitory nature of my work: the beauty in decay; the circle of life.
January 2016