Artist Statement and Biography

Artist Statement

I am a London-based abstract artist whose work is driven by a deep fascination with water: its beauty, its restless movement, and its transformative power. Water sustains life, reflects light, intertwines with plants and people, and shifts its very form in response to temperature, gradient and environment. It is both constant and ever-changing.

This passion is rooted in thirty years as a photographer specialising in water subjects, coupled with a life spent in, on and under water. Kayaking, diving and exploring wild places have given me an intimate, physical understanding of water that no amount of observation alone can offer.

Kayaking has taught me the awesome power of a river in spate. Diving has revealed the otherworldly calm of weightlessness beneath the surface, and the glittering magic of bioluminescent plankton on a night dive. Exploring caves has shown me how water sculpts stone over millennia. In disused mines I have witnessed something altogether different, the stunning colours and patterns that emerge as minerals, dissolved in water, leach down unstable walls, transforming decay into unexpected beauty. That embodied knowledge now informs every mark I make, as I seek to capture not just how water looks, but how it feels.

To create my paintings I work with mixed-media on stretched canvas, paper and canvas board. I use expressive brushstrokes, palette knife marks, pouring, dripping and splattering to build up layers in paint that express both my love of water and the interactions I have with it. I also bring the place where land and water meet into my paintings, mixing in sand and gravel collected at the water's edge and using palette knife work to suggest plants, flowers and mud.

Some works incorporate highly reflective materials: diamond dust, gold, silver and copper leaf, sparkling stones. Water is, after all, a perpetual mirror, always reflecting the world back at us.

Biography

Background

I was born in Worcester, UK, during the 1960’s and took to drawing almost as soon as I could hold a pencil. As a child I was rarely without a sketchbook, utterly absorbed in drawing, painting and making things. That compulsion to create has never stopped.

At eighteen I moved to London to study art and design, and it was there that I fell in love with photography. The darkroom felt like a magical place to me; I never tired of watching an image slowly reveal itself in the developing tray. That sense of wonder led naturally to a career as a freelance photographer.

Then, in my early thirties, I woke up one morning and decided I wanted to go kayaking. That same evening I was out on the River Thames, near Westminster, having my first lesson in the heart of central London, and I was immediately hooked. Within a few years I was teaching kayaking and competing in kayak slalom, reaching Division One before turning those skills towards exploring watery places. I paddled sea kayaks along coastlines, ran whitewater rivers in the UK and France, surfed waves in a kayak, and pottered along quiet backwaters and canals. That intimate relationship with water transformed my photography, drawing it firmly towards aquatic environments, wild places and adventure water sports.

In 2004 I qualified as a diver, and my cameras began going underwater, opening up an entirely new perspective on the element I was already obsessed with. Around the same time I discovered caving and also began exploring disused mines.

All of that lived experience, years spent in, on and under water, now runs through everything I paint.


Recent Exhibitions

  • Elemental, The Chelsea Gallery, King's Road, London (5-17 March 2024). Group exhibition featuring four artists exploring connections to nature. I served as organiser and exhibiting artist.
  • The River Within, Riverside Gallery, Richmond-upon-Thames (2 September - 16 November 2019). Solo photography exhibition presenting London from the perspective of a kayak.


Education and Awards


Professional Memberships


Additional Exhibition Activity