Artist statement

I paint contemporary abstracts largely from memory, using acrylic paint and details in soft pastel and oil pastel. I layer up paint and pastel, feeling out the shapes within the familiar and tracing the places that my feet have carried me, and the memories others entrust to me for commissions.

I have hypophantasia, which means my mind thinks rather than sees. The images I do see in my mind are mostly fleeting and ringed by darkness as though seen through a pinhole camera. My paintings carry this transient, ethereal quality, reflecting the way that I process memories. Translating them in paint enables me to celebrate the beauty in the small parts of the everyday and let the mundane or difficult parts fall away, so that the joy resonates the loudest.

Motherhood is the thread that pulls through all of my work. I paint places I’ve explored with my husband and our young daughters. I studied English Literature in Sussex almost 20 years ago, and I still start by asking how and why. What do I want my children to know? How do I want them to feel when I’m no longer around? What’s the difference between memory and nostalgia?

My mind is often noisy; painting is where it goes calm. I work in short bursts, early morning, between other work commitments, while the pasta boils. I trust my intuition, my fingers, and that it can be whatever it will be.