I paint on wild surfaces using earthen pigments - raw colour sifted from rocks and clays that I have gathered within my local landscape. In this way, my work is a direct response to the land and my movement through it ~ Intrinsically bound up in the environment that surrounds me, each brushstroke infused with the living embodiment of place. Working with these worlds of ochres as a coloured memory of the land and a record of deep time.
A delicate merging of mineral, flora and fauna.
Each painting is a living alchemy of animal hide, herbal infusions, plant dyes, tree barks, wild pigments and crushed minerals - An embodied conversation with materials filled with animistic materiality.
My relationship with wild colour and raw, native materials invites a deep intimacy with the Earth. It is a continuous conversation that brings me deeper into my senses and my body as a continuation of the living landscape ~ whether I am gathering the minerals, processing the pigment, or using this colour to paint with.. the entire process is deeply engaged and relational.
Whether on animal hide or cotton/linen canvas, these paintings are birthed as a series of complex networks made up of an accumulation of painted lines. Layer by layer, the image grows organically in the same way that can be seen in the self-organising growth patterns of the natural world, determining its own development.
As new layers emerge, they progressively uncover hidden spaces and depth within the composition, and it is through this process of building up and layering paint on the surface by which the image is discovered. By harnessing this intuitive way of creating, I remove expectation and surrender completely to process.
