I am very excited to be showing 27 new paintings in my solo show at Cambridge Contemporary Art gallery.
I have written something about the work below:
A new body of work shaped by themes of journey, memory, and loss and place.
A recurring element throughout many of the paintings in this collection is the depiction of a horizon line. Living by the coast, this visual boundary has long been present in my work, but more recently it has taken on a deeper significance. Over the past year, I have been processing personal grief, and this experience has inevitably informed the work. I have come to think of the horizon as a kind of threshold or veil, the meeting point between the visible and the hidden, the present and what lies beyond.
The works depict imagined landscapes that are not tied to any specific geographic location but instead emerge as evocations of remembered or internalised places. These spaces operate in a liminal, dreamlike register, situated between recollection and invention.
The process is fundamentally guided by spontaneity in its initial stages, which plays a decisive role in shaping the eventual outcome. Rather than working toward a predetermined image, the paintings develop through an open-ended engagement with material and gesture. Forms are not imposed but gradually disclosed; for instance, the suggestion of a snow-covered mountain may arise unexpectedly through the accumulation and interaction of marks.
At a certain point in the process, the surface begins to yield visual cues that prompt a shift from intuitive mark-making to a more attentive and responsive mode of observation. It is at this stage that close looking becomes essential, as I follow and interpret the latent possibilities embedded within the evolving composition.
Each work is therefore the result of a dialogic process between intention and emergence, control and contingency. The outcome remains inherently unpredictable, and the practice is underpinned by a sustained trust in process, where meaning and form are discovered rather than imposed.
