My work consists of intricate oil paintings of water and people in water. I produce paintings based on photographed source material that I either model for or capture myself, and then produce fluid free hand drawings and paintings inspired by the imagery I collect.
I have a longstanding fascination with water and use it to express ideas of time and impermanence. The intricacy of the patterns of light and water in my paintings speak of transience; a brief split second sooner or later in the captured source image would alter them radically. By contrast, the fleeting moment that is captured in each of my paintings juxtaposes with the time consuming painting process.
The use of a figure in my painting serves to remind the viewer of our collective smallness, the form of the figure is radically altered my its surroundings, and both elements, the body and the water play and integral part of the finished painting, a visual reminder of our own ephemerality and the inevitability of being changed by our surroundings.
Water has a dual nature, both calming and life giving, whilst simultaneously unknowable and threatening. Some of her pieces imbue the viewer with a sense of tranquillity and calm, with others, largely the pieces of figures breaking the water surface, in the split second of emergence, offer something more urgent, the deep primal need to rise and draw breath.
Painting