While studying for my MA in Fine Art at Plymouth University, I refined my focus to explore the poetics and philosophies of the fluid dynamics of water in its diverse forms. My work involves getting under the skin of water, to learn from it so I may be less rigid.
​Water takes me beyond myself.
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Since university, I established my studio in the South Hams, though my work has taken me across the globe. Having once lost my studio, I now always consider my primary studio to be the 'outside', 'in the field' and I am at home making work outside by the sea, river, in the rain, snow, and even in the domestic setting such as a kitchen.
Wherever I go, I take time to nurture a listening, a space to observe water. Immersion is both literal and metaphorical—I swim year-round, without bothering with the faff of a wetsuit, snorkelling when the weather allows to make underwater films. As I slip under the skin of water, In become part of water.
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Most days, I go down the lane to the sea to encounter water and gather samplings and sketches of direct encounters, using pencil, ink, writings, film, sound. Back at the inside studio, I reflect on what water has to tell me, my ever-patient guru - and aim to paint as if I were water or even - water-ish - painting.
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Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?
– Lao Tzu​
It all began when drawing by a pond in 1996, I realised I was not so much drawing the pond as it appeared, but an improvisatory sense of it, the feeling of it, the sound of it, the scent of it, the wind playing with the rushes in it, a wren singing its liquid song there... I became aware that these elements were not isolated, not separate entities, but a dancing interconnection of dynamics in the same one moment. And in that moment I spontaneously dipped the drawing into the water! The water altered my lines and my communion with water began and with it my long research into it's articulation. This is the essence of my practice.
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Marks are purposefully left raw so that any signs of their making remain in evidence. I explore water in order to learn its way of being - its wild philosophies - and to develop a water mindset. In fact, my research is grounded in Eastern philosophies, practises, and aesthetics - as they so often use water as a metaphor.
Only then, do I return to the studio to paint - as if I were water.
