Treehouse 04 (silver birch) Painting

I am an artist with an affinity for wilderness, a concern for environment and a need for community. I exhibit extensively, lead collaborative, participatory and development projects and was elected an academician at the Royal West of England Academy of Art in 2016. A persistent curiosity about physical and conceptual relationships with the environment drives my work. Exploring the physical world is central to my practice, examining notions of ‘permanence and impermanence’ and ‘substance and essence’, including human and animal relationships with the environment. I absorb my subject through direct experiences and researched information, often using low-tech video footage as the source and starting point for reprocessing the subject through drawing and painting. From 2013-2016 I jointly undertook a collaborative project called Flock Together, working with fellow academician Debbie Locke RWA to research and create a body of works which interrogate and reinterpret sheep farming activity in the Blackdown Hills AONB in the South West of England. In contrast to the over-saturated, heightened, screen-based reality through which we increasingly experience our environment, my paintings and drawings reclaim the world as a personal encounter of depth and complexity. Painting for me is a necessarily ponderous activity. My gestures and marks speak of authorship and authenticity. My works present a re-enchantment with the world.