For me the thread that binds together my practice is the interpretation and response to a place experienced and the evocation, through the application of paint, of images. The process of painting and the use of monochromatic glazes of paint over flat sometimes highly coloured grounds hold and freeze the moments of recalled memory in the materiality of pigment and medium. Each painting belongs to a series. Each series comes from a different location.

 ‘The Swing’ series recounts memories of childhood, with which we can all associate. It is a swing once used by the daughters of a neighbor 40 years ago and is brought to life again by the grandchildren. ‘The Swing’ stands as a reminder of a life that was, with memories held forever in the minds of the parents. The ground colour is not intense in this series, there is no need to create a tension and so the paint is applied in a way that suggests both a presence and a memory.

The Studio Chair Series explores the relationship of my chair to my studio space, a white on white experience made possible to view through the casting and creating of shadows and tones of light and paint to reveal this camouflaged event.

In the German Series I recall a journey seen through condensation on the windows of a coach and beyond to the mist enveloping the surrounding landscape. The paintings convey the dampness of the fog and the sense of the layers of atmosphere, experienced and emphasized by the physical wiping back to the surface under-paint: a form of paint reduction that in fact reveals more colour, a reversal of the activity experienced when using white grounds to paint on.

In the paintings ‘The Swing’ and ‘The Studio Chair’, I reference the physical activity of painting and the illusion of pictorial space, the dialogue with paintings past in the referencing of Velasquez Los Meninas and paintings present in the sense of place and the evocation of memory in paint today.