About my work
A creative block that sent me right back to mark making basics a few years ago resulted in a completely new direction of work, away from semi-figurative painting to charcoal and pencil drawing, purely abstract and with the mark itself as king.
It also prompted questions about the cognitive processes involved in both the making and the viewing of such work, and in particular the way the brain’s innate pattern recognition function always tries to make sense out of chaos, and forces the viewer to try to ‘see something’ in abstract art – in my case an unwanted distraction.
I often use pattern in my work in a considered attempt to get around this problem. The idea is that by presenting the all-important marks in a seemingly ordered format, the pattern-seeking brain is immediately satisfied, thus freeing the viewer from any concern that she may be missing some hidden message, and allowing her to focus fully on the marks.
Medium, dimensions, etc: Almost all these works are charcoal and graphite on cartridge paper, either 85×60 or 50x50cm.
About the titles
The titles are completely unrelated to their content. Rather than give an entirely abstract piece of work a falsely meaningful name, or else a dry unique identifier (such as Untitled 1, etc) instead I make good use of the title to highlight an issue I feel strongly about.
Current works therefore adopt the actual names of just a few of the lone refugee children in Northern France refused entry into the UK despite a legal right to be here.
10% of sales from these goes to the film/campaign ‘Calais Children: a Case to Answer’ by Sue Clayton
About me
I live on the Isle of Wight, on a houseboat designed and built by my husband and myself. Having dropped out of art school in my youth, I worked mainly in computing and then Psychotherapy before making a serious return to my art roots, 10+ years ago.