FOR ME IT STARTS WITH observations

The opening was wonderful. 

the painting 'old history' was sold so it's going to a lovely new home.

The artist/observer records what others don’t see. The process of image making starts in the imagining and reality of what others often dismiss. The unseen has its values in image making, landscape and imagination. All of the senses go into making the artwork and the image may come into the world to be recognised and understood, but it may not.

It’s difficult not to be poetic about this harsh land. The simplicity and at the same time the complexity of it all has a tension that I enjoy exploring. There is always something covering something else. Layers of chaos mark a place in a particular way.

Un-noticed spaces appeal to me, they have their own history and story: the colours, something out of place, the light and dark. I like to record what others don’t see. No matter how dominant and strong the space looks, it has its own vulnerabilities. The process of image making combines the imagination and reality of what others might dismiss. All the senses go into making the artwork and the image may come into the world to be recognised and understood. Or maybe not. 

I’m interested in the unseen because these are not grand vistas. Grand vistas will always survive, but the unseen spaces become neglected, unloved and unspoken. That’s when it becomes invisible and unvalued. Our perception of whether a place or space is valuable or not is reliant on what we can take out of it, use, rearrange.  By focusing on some of these spaces they might find new life, have new observers that see the mauve of the leaf hit against the yellow ochre of the stone in a wash gully down an untrodden path. 

The history of the landscape, imagined or otherwise, is present through the history of art. The conflicts, the romance of images, the myriad of images around us presents us with a visual history that repeats itself. I try to approach a space each time with a different appreciation. Nature does a lot of this for me; the light is always different, the wind, the colours, the time of year. My experience is always different. 

Then there is the difficult job of making the artwork no matter what the medium. Always trials and errors, revisions, so it’s easier for me to consider all work as a process...never finished always a collection of ideas, memories and mysteries that will appear then disappear during the process of making the work. 

Summing up, my work is about landscape and its spaces. It is something that captures you when you walk outside…the landscape that creeps into life and memory.