Artist

Member of The Arborealists

Hello and thank you for visiting my website…

I hope that you find your visit interesting and if you would like to know more please feel free to get in touch.

As an introduction to me and my art perhaps the best starting point is to state that I have always felt a deep connection to nature; this is not an uncommon trait amongst artists or indeed the indigenous Cornish, of whom I am one. From as long as I can remember I have felt that connection so deeply that I believed if you could look beneath my skin you would find not blood, guts and bones but the Camel estuary, the rocks along the banks of the river Fowey and the wild moorland grasses that stretch between and connect those two, all mingled in with the waters of both those rivers and the ocean that they meet. So yes I am interested intellectually but also viscerally in the beauty of nature of which we are just one part.

I have used my artistic methods to explore this deep sense of connection; sometimes employing captured sounds with assemlages or drawing on the transformational process of art to inform everyday materials with meaning - simply by re-contextualising them. These methods often resulting in ephemeral works that now only exist in photographs.

Trees…

In 2013, about a year after completing my MSc, I began focussing primarily on painting trees. Having announced this decision to a good friend I was taken on an eight mile hike into the midst of Dartmoor where there were some of the most interesting trees I have ever encountered. These trees were the inspiration for the paintings that I made over the next four or five years and led to my joining The Arborealists in 2016.

These Dartmoor trees’ growth patterns reflect the environment that supports them; it makes evident the processes of the negotiation performed by the trees - reaching always towards light, the trees often become contorted as they strive to maximise their growth.

I cannot ignore the parallels between these aspects of trees and our own lives… and yet, the speed of our human development feels out of sympathy with the much longer cycles of trees.

Slowing down, closely experiencing and observing these environments and their processes then painting them is a luxurious commitment in this digital age, it offers a bridge between the temporal reality of each.

Since joining The Arborealists in 2016 I have enjoyed taking part in collaborations with other members of the group on projects such as The Lady Park Wood Project, instigated by ecologist and author George Peterkin and the film produced as part of that project. The clip below is taken from the film and includes a commentary by art agent Robert Eagle.

Please see my biography page for further details of other past exhibitions and projects.