About Me
A self-taught British painter based in Oxford and Swansea, I am inspired by a love of rural, urban and domestic spaces. Having spent the majority of my working life teaching English my paintings are often interwoven with lines of poetry and literature. I now spend as much time as possible in the studio, creating contemporary oil paintings on stretched canvas and textured paper. I produce a mixture of land, sea and sky-scapes as well as still life.
My Journey
As a child, school holidays were always spent in south west Scotland with my grandparents, where life revolved around sheep, my bike and swimming in cold sea. I also made endless felt tip dawings of farm buildings on great lengths of concertinaed computer paper that my Dad brought home from work (Does anyone remember that stuff? It was folded in huge perforated lengths with faded green lines of coding on the back and holes down the sides?)
My grandmother gifted me my first set of proper brushes in an ancient tubular brush container made of black tin – I seem to remember that the lid doubled as a water container. It turns out to be from the early 19th Century and originally belonged to my great grandfather who was a travelling artist – who spent lots of time in Venice. I must write a blog about him! Galloway remains special to me as a source of inspiration and as an artistic retreat. However, it was time spent with my young family in the Aude in South West France, painting en plein air, that brought me back to painting more seriously and making my first art sales. I currently split my time between studios in Oxford and The Gower Peninsula in South Wales. I studied for my degree in English and American Studies at Swansea University many moons ago - it is a real joy to return to this beautiful Welsh coastline after so long.
I first exhibited for Oxford Art weeks in 2017 and was invited to produce a small solo exhibition at The Earth Trust, Wittenham Clumps, in Oxford in 2019. Having overcome health challenges in 2022, I have since worked on private commissions and making my art full time.
I will be exhibiting for Oxford Art Weeks again this Spring, 2024.
Artist Statement
Characterized by a harmonious, naturalistic colour palette, my contemporary oil paintings are comprised of detailed realist elements and abstract mark making. Leading the viewer from the darkest of darks to the lightest of lights through a spectrum of earth tones, I am interested in the sculptural features of landforms and familiar household objects. In addition to the visual components of colour and light, I hope to capture the multisensory essence and unique atmosphere of any given place or object(s).
For me, everything I am doing as an artist comes back to the idea of exploring the themes of connection and loss, these form the on-going conceptual backdrop when I write and paint and think. I seek to depict both the tremendous stillness and the infinite movement in our surroundings. interested in the fact that we are reflected both literally and metaphorically in the objects and landscape that surrounds us; by featuring reflective surfaces I seek to point the viewer towards these environmental connections.
“Beauty lay not in the thing, but in what the thing symbolized,”
Thomas Hardy: Tess of the D’Urbervilles.