Context

To me the picture plane is a testing ground, an open surface to play with and unravel different subject matter and motifs.  I do this in order to find and produce glitches, and to surprise both the viewer and myself.  I like the idea of the journey as a form of composition and I try to develop my motifs in the same way, allowing them the time to pass in and out of sketchbooks and paintings, leaving behind them the shifting wake of their meanings and interpretations.  This is the partial reason behind the importance of the quickly drawn line in the work.

Themes of exile, travel, movement, migration, translation and exploration are all key influences.  To provide these with entry points into my practice I use the picture plane to build initial structures before introducing the theme as a motif into this framework. These testing structures are often stolen from other sources, from literature, nature, personal experience and objects such as barricades, fires or roads.  In this way a motif can be tested both on, and as a part of this platform, the result of the two together constituting the work as a whole, as a painting or a drawing.   I do not see any hierarchical distinctions between these two as mediums; my drawings are not simply precursors to my paintings, but link instead as equals in terms of being both interests and artistic tools.

If I have much say in the direction of the currents of my chosen themes, then the symbols and motifs are the metal and copper wires that try to hold some part of them in, and the structures of the picture planes are the pylons that prop them up.  The works then, like light switches, are the convergences of such systems, and should be able to convert these forces into something useful and new.