"The Dish, Cafe Pripyat, Exclusion zone, Ukraine" Painting

I make images of buildings and landscapes using acrylic paints, inks, collage, phototransfer and pastels. I am inspired by the environment from urban ruins, abandoned monuments to mountains and skyscapes. I like to explore the buildings and spaces people leave behind and the memories they hold. I enjoy observing and depicting natural and non natural objects in the environment. Inspired by my friend and Photographer Keith Waterworth visiting Ukraine in 2014, I have produced a series of work based on ruins from the exclusion Zone around Chernobyl. I was fortunate enough to visit this area for myself in 2018 and have made further art from my own photographs to add to the series. As well as ruins I am inspired by nature and produced a series of landscapes from Tromso which I visited in January 2018. At this time of year there is only a few hours of half light. Depicting the town, mountains and sky in this permanent dusk/night gave my images a magical sense of the unique power of the wild. I also enjoyed painting the amazing cloud formations which formed over the town when seen from the mountains. They seem to depict alternative landscapes, and embodiment of Nordic legend and hold a mystic beauty of their own complimenting the landscape below. Visiting Marseille in 2022 I loved painting the views from high up above the town focussing on the sky and storm clouds weighing heavy on the town. "Bus top Bunker", an image I made from my visit to Ukraine in was shortlisted for the RA summer show in 2023 and "Night in the mouth of the Troll" one from Tromso made the short longlist for the Jackson art prize in 2026. I have recently started to add collage into my work, interweaving family photos from the 1970s into paintings of ex Soviet Spomeniks and architecture. I am interested in connections and juxtapositions of different societies and personal experiences. These images evoke loss, displacement and memory. I have always been interested in what is remembered and what is forgotten by individuals and society. I very much appreciate the relationship between the image and the viewer. Each person will bring their own history to the experience of looking at art. I therefore hope that people will enjoy my art through their unique viewpoint while also connecting with the wider collective experience which I hope my work conveys.