Statement

Sometimes I think I paint because I’m not in a band. I have heard that all you need to write a country song is three chords and the truth. That resonates with me when I try to convey how I paint and why I do it. Celebrating the essence of my subject simply and directly is what I hope to achieve. I don’t want the painting to be a representation, but rather a feeling of the place. I strive to distill the scene before me down to a combination of tone, colour and gesture with a bold handling of paint.

As a plein-air painter, I am challenged by the changing light and movement of the world around me. This forces me to simplify my subject, injecting it spontaneously with whatever I’ve got in that moment. I want to transform something very visceral of the world around me into paint; the beat of the ocean, the chorus of the wind. The process is a performance but one intrinsically linked to the product. The nature of this process dictates working at a smaller scale to achieve the intimacy and immediacy I am after. My paintings may be small, but I like to think they punch above their weight class.