"Yellow Protea flower study" Photograph

I am preoccupied with ideas and experiences that I find difficult to otherwise articulate. Photography allows me to record and communicate these feelings. My art practice helps me navigate a reality that often feels precarious and fraught with existential questions. Creating a photograph brings me into dialogue with these ideas. Sometimes the results are clear and concrete, sometimes they are abstract and ephemeral.

I approach my work as an act of discovery. On the rare occasion that I have a finished image in mind, I am excited by the prospect that the process may lead me in unexpected directions. I prefer to work with less; natural light whenever possible, limited lens choices, making the most of what the moment provides. Working within deliberately chosen constraints forces me to push my creative limits, which I find can yield much more satisfying results.

For still life and studio work in general I use a very simple off-camera lighting setup, often mixed with available natural light. My most recent studio work incorporates the use of deliberate distortion, photographing through textural materials and layering reflections to emphasize a sense of the surreal.

Working with abstracted subjects, I watch for ways in which form, colour and tonality can be used to create a satisfying, balanced compositional tension. Unexpected juxtapositions and textural details are also important considerations. No matter the scale of the abstract study I am working within, these elements add depth to the body of work as a whole.

My art tends toward a deeper consideration of the merits of uncertainty, observing and embracing the constant flux of it all. I enjoy finding beauty in the darkness of existential questions and relish an overwhelming sense of the infinite. I am seeking comfort in the questions themselves, using abstraction, tension, and contradiction to explore contemplative moments that may cause us discomfort or awe.

Visually these themes emerge in my work through a sense of pensive observation. Mixing natural beauty with visual evidence of an unavoidable impermanence, documentary photography blended with abstract experimentation; I am always in pursuit of images that reveal more the longer one looks.