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2022 onwards The smooth rounded forms of pebbles on a beach are something that seem to have universal appeal. Children and beach-goers pocket them as manuport objects or souvenirs. Dishes of pebbles line the windowsill of every coastal holiday cottage as decor. People take them and paint them, often with message for others to find. …
2009 onwards Whilst I don’t consider myself a photographer, photography does play an integral part of my art practice – be that taking reference photos, capturing imagery to directly use in digital paintings, or using photos or film to create a visual diary (to help my injured brain to remember ideas, inspiration and the progress …
2009 onwards My work has been primarily concerned with the landscape of the Scottish Highlands and Islands – it’s topography, it’s wide open spaces, big skies, shores, rocks and its human heritage. I enjoy the uncertain spaces (where land and sea, manmade and natural, ancient and familiar, bleak and abundant, visibility and opacity meet), and …
2024 These abstract digital paintings started – as all the most interesting projects do – with play, and the question ‘how much is too much?’ As artists we are so very often focused on what is pleasant, beautiful and balanced. But what amount of colour, pattern and texture can be combined in close co-habitation before …
2022 I love sea pottery, and the magical and randomised process of how ceramic objects become broken into select chucks of colour / texture / shape / pattern, perfected and smoothed by the sea – the sea as editor and curator, the human eye and brain (of the finder) being the second to perform such …
2023 With poor health (and studio time often severely limited by the amount of time I can spend out of bed), I often need a project with a clear idea, that I can see through in a couple of hours (to the sort of level of satisfaction that makes me feel the time was well-spent …
2022 onwards I often use quick, gestural, brushed ink drawings as a way to loosen up in the studio, or just a way to switch off and relax – creating trailing, fluid lines with brush (or stick, or finger, or feather…). I’ve always loved Japanese calligraphy, that place where movement, meaning and meditation meet with …
2012 A body of work prepared for an exhibition with photographer Gavin Hookway, which took place at Eden Court, Inverness, September 2012. “Fine art and photography blend to explore texture, contrasts of light, our perceptions of beauty, past lives, historical timelines, and that slow, inevitable reclamation by nature that ultimately reminds us of our own fragile human …
2021 – 2022 Earlier digital abstract work can be seen here. As I became more comfortable with and confident in my use of digital media, the work I made become more complex, less graphic, and more like my conventional painting. I began working with more and more layers, and relying increasingly on importing photographs, patterns …
2023 During a visit to the beach, I noticed a pattern of marks on a boulder and took photos. Researching them back at home, I discovered that these were made by the Common Limpet when it feeds, scraping its radula over the rock surface. Inspired by these sets of parallel lines, arranged in arcs, I …