Memories are a personal construct of history, belonging to the past. The senses anchor us physically in the present moment, and imagination moulds and propels our future.
Trees have always been present throughout my life. My connection to them maps across time as sites of memory, of enjoying them in the now, and as a place to dream of tomorrow—past, present, and future in one. Realising this led me to the understanding that as an artist, I endeavour to understand the world using the self as the artifact of knowing.
A practice that is being reshaped and redefined by my relationship to the transience of the digital age and reflects the dualist forces of cause and effect’ within my practice. A practice that, for me, highlights how sitting with memory and perception can reveal more profound insights into my perceptual filters and the role of omission in creative decisions.
In reaching the point of balance within myself and my practice, I believe I am an artist who doesn't have to fix the things around me, but I do need to understand them as best I can to tell their story.
So that is me as the artist I am today, but it has been a very winding path, full of twists and turns to get here. I have not always enjoyed the journey, and hindsight is a bitch. Especially when you realise that you knew something years ago but say to yourself, 'No, that's not me,' and walk away. Has the journey made me a better artist? I think so. Would I have been a different artist from what I am now? Maybe...
The path that eventually led me to today took me through the sciences, hospitality, medical challenges, various toxic relationships, and so on. Along the way, I picked up a fascination with new ideas, a love of complexity, an interest in geology, unique minerals and crystals, jazz and classical music, and taking pictures… obviously!
Photography is like the holy grail of interests… There is always more to learn, explore, and develop regarding technical skills and artistic expression. I can’t imagine my life without it… But me being me, I am never satisfied with just taking an image. The language of colour (or lack thereof), the tones and textures all have a voice but do the medium of transmission. What I print it on; how I print it; do I etch, project, submit as an essay of an overlay with text (be it in braille, Morse code or something equally as obscure) or bind it into a book?
The language of transmission is as important, if not more, than the language of light. In every real sense, language is at the core of my practice. My first artistic love, and the one I walked away from as 'it was not me' was a love of words and the complexity and structure of language as a written form. Its inherent contradictions are beautiful and unique... 'sharp cheese' and 'rounded squares' logically and physically can't exist. Still, linguistically, we know and understand, and that is the beauty of language.
So there you have my work in a nutshell. My work is about the language in all its forms we use.
Oh, and I dream of all the things to come...