Mary,Elise and the Cat Painting

A graduate from The Royal College of Art and Glasgow School of Art, specialising in Printed and Mixed media textiles my working practice includes Painting, Printmaking and Textile Design. Each discipline is connected through drawing, texture and mark making working towards a narrative. My work is often based around the theme of the urban and domestic, visualising ordinary everyday scenes and settings that are sometimes mundane; figures sitting, reading, eating or just sitting reflecting. These are the situations that we all do or see at some point and it is because of the ordinariness of them that I am drawn to recording them. The paintings are composed using a series of drawings and photographic reference which are used together to construct the compositions and themes. The drawings are also used as a reference for my screen prints and more recently as material for my extended practice to the applied arts; using my drawing to extend the narrative onto fabric, through the process of digital printing. Working within these practices gives me the opportunity to adapt and change my work to a variety of surface applications. A painting is contained, usually within a square or rectangle and framed as one single image, the screen prints are set as limited edition multiples and the application of my work to the applied arts is intended to utilise my drawing and use this practice to re addresses scale, repeat size, and context. The textile works can be hung flat and exhibited in a commercial and domestic setting. As engineered placement prints they can be applied for specific areas of upholstered furniture. The familiarity and titles of the works created through drawing, painting, printmaking or textiles are intended to re create a situation that the viewer will identify with and may even evoke similar situations or events which they have encountered or experienced. While the works are often humorous, they are also perceptive and affectionate observations.