Notes
October 2024
Jan 2023 - ?
The sabbatical period continues......
Oct 2022
Tabula rasa.
Largely due to seismic
shifts, from the personal to the geopolitical and ecological, this year has
become an artistic sabbatical, including a long-overdue purging of my
studio. I look forward to getting back to work if & when I can make some
sense of it all.
The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you
Don't go back to sleep!
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't
go back to sleep!
People are going back and forth
across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch,
The door is round and open
Don't go back
to sleep!
April 2022
New paintings.
The interplay between people & the
natural environment has always been an important foundation of my work as an
artist. As our world moves into an ever-more precarious place, it seems to
drive the need for what Ben Okri calls existential creativity – a
creativity rooted in the seismic and transformative changes which are
happening around us, where hope, apathy & despair co-exist.
This new collection of paintings is
a small step in that direction, focusing directly on people, not as
individuals but as parts of our flawed, messy, and wonderful human species.
2020
These new works are a celebration of just a few
of the keystone species which are essential to a balanced and healthy
ecosystem. As with the keystone in a masonry arch, a keystone species, which
can be any organism from large mammals to bacteria & fungi, is a pivotal
component in maintaining the delicate balance of an ecological structure. If
that species is removed, it sets off a chain reaction which can cause the
whole system to collapse.
Indigenous people, living intimately with the
natural world, have always understood this balance. As our societies have
become urbanised and more detached, so that understanding has become lost in
our enthusiastic exploitation of the planet.
2018
We’re in a time of huge uncertainty & division,
socially, politically, and ecologically, and this provides the context for
all art, whether or not the artist chooses to engage directly with it.
For me, it seems important to reflect this
context in at least some aspects of my work, but at the same time it seems
equally important not to lose sight of the beauty of the natural world
around us, and the transcendant values of colour and form. After all, part
of what defines us as humans is our spirit & creativity, as well as the
chaos that we leave in our wake.
2016
Like many artists, my painting is concerned with
creating an alternative reality through which to explore the shoreline
between our everyday, known world, and the uncharted territory which lies
beyond it. Ecological thinking has done much to shift that shoreline over
recent decades, giving us the opportunity for a much wider view of our place
in the world.
At a personal level, relocating to a studio on
the edge of the elemental and diverse Northwest Highlands of Scotland has
also brought another powerful reminder of forces much bigger than ourselves.
I'm continuing to work with familiar iconic images and with more ambiguous,
abstracted pieces drawn from the textures & forms of the Highland landscape,
to continue that process of exploration & mapping.
Art is inevitably a reflection both of the
society in which it was produced and of the personal journey of the
individual artist, and it seems to me that the tensions between those
societal and personal dynamics are the source of some of the most
interesting art.
