‘Welcome to my dreams’ 9:09mins, Monochrome single screen projection with sound.
”Dreams cannot be completely recalled upon waking, like a haze we remember them broken and fragmented, but the feeling of isolation, abandonment and fear that we might experience in a dream stays with us long after the dream has ended. It is this atmospheric emotion that I hope to capture. Dreams are determined by individual experiences in our waking lives and how they in turn are interpreted and made known outside of our own thoughts. We tend to hide away from the negative, the nightmares, the secrets and fears hidden in our unconscious, but when you dream you cannot predict what will happen. It is this uncontrollable feeling that makes our own mind an unnerving subject to explore, and it is this fascination that drives me.
The audience plays an important role, and I keep the display in mind with everything I do. Engagement and interaction is a big part of my practice, because it is the workings of a human mind I am ultimately trying to visually represent.”
I use the medium of photography, video and installation work as a method of preservation and renewal. In capturing the fleeting moments of the past I hope to unearth the secret fears of the end. I want to express my ideas through the basic shapes , sounds and sensations we can all recognize and relate too. I find inspiration from nature, the wind through the trees in the forests, the changes of season, the sky as the sun rises and fades. The distorted branches and dried out flowers that slowly disappear. The ultimate brutality of death and rebirth that never ceases.
Circles; acrylic and gesso on canvas on wood, 111 x 111 cm
Someone once told me that trees thrive best as a community, where their roots and leaves can touch those of other trees. When we walk into a forest we seem to be confronted by a geometric grid of vertical forms and spaces. But if looked at from a perpendicular viewpoint, the pattern of the forest can be seen to evolve from an expanding series of circles.
I am inspired by the meditative potential of nature. My artworks represent time spent ‘being in’ rather than ‘looking at’ the landscape. I am often asked why I work only in black and white. Piet Mondrian, in his essays on neo-plasticism, explained his belief that dualities of line, colour and tone represent a more universal expression of the relationship between man and nature, life and death. Likewise, I am interested in contrasting formal qualities in order to convey a sense of time and place. The marks become a code. Viewers are invited to read into the work their own personal experiences and memories. My work often develops in series, or as installations, representing the way we often experience our environment — not standing still, but moving through it.
