Practitioner
I am a skilled multi-disciplinary artist. I create work to bring brightness and positivity and allow for visual engagement for all visual abilities. I am excited about the possibilities of colour to affect mood and enjoy creating large scale mural work in the community, exposing areas of discord to colourful, positive images to try and change the behavioural tone of the area.
I have worked for over 25 years exploring texture and haptic interaction with art. This was inspired and informed by a short time working as a volunteer at Keech Hospice in Silsoe, Bedfordshire. I used this time to explore the concept of art and visual impairment. This supported my work as a silicon artist which evolved to include pargeting and plaster work in the Heritage sector and a First Class BA (Hons) in Interaction Design. I push the boundaries of texture and light and shadow to create emotion through dimensional work, which I encourage the viewer to touch and interact with. I very much believe art should become part of how we engage with the world and each other through exposure to texture combined with colour, this can be achieved through sculptural artworks and digital interaction.
I am hugely concerned in the loss of creative subjects from the curriculum and I see the effects this has on young people in their lack of self-efficacy and low self- esteem and high anxiety. This motivates me to create opportunities for people of all ages to explore this side of themselves. I endeavour to create events and workshops to show a different side of creativity than the expected sitting down and working in silence scenario so common in schools these days. I encourage safe creative exploration with no rules and no judgements. I strongly believe art and creativity should not be graded in the education system and I feel this is detrimental to free expression. With this in mind I encourage free expression with there being no wrong or right way, but your own way.
Most recently I have been exploring cartoons and how to expose emotion through the use of images, specifically to tell difficult stories. I am fascinated by the work of war artists and how they convey the reality of war, which words simply cannot, with the most basic of materials. I trained in the use of images in the therapeutic context to explore this further and it still inspires me today. The power of images should not be underestimated.
