From The Outside Painting

Artist, living and working in London creating paintings that are primarily based around figurative concerns. More recently my work has retained the figurative aspects that primarily hold interest for me, employing more observational drawing and relying on the repetition of painting to find and ‘describe’ the image. My painting practice is often quite spontaneous, with the challenges of drawing, colour and composition being worked out on the surface. This, for me, gives the work a history and narrative with the glimpses of previous marks and colours that lend a sense of both frustration and resolution. I’m very interested in working practices that are borne from an inherent understanding of the materials to hand. This is not restricted to painting but does involve other forms of mark making and construction techniques. Paint has been the obsession for most of my art practice and the resultant challenges this presents in creating work that is a reflection on traditional representation and pushing beyond the normal expectations of portraiture. My work is predominately derived from ‘the self’ and through the process of working, the faces become more anonymous to an end result that is traditionally applied yet retains little of the original features that define an identity or an immediately recognisable face.