Much of my early childhood was spent with my grandparents in the Scottish Borders. My parent’s home was in Gloucestershire on the South Wales Borders. I am now living in the border country of North Wales. I have sense of comfort in living on the borders always being drawn towards the Celtic, which I believe is a state of being rather than a place.
In my work as an artist print maker I’m drawn into exploring the area between conscious and unconscious, the borderland state of hypnagogia the world between the dream and the waking.
As a printmaker I find an excitement, in that in that once a mark is started I’m committed to following it to its completion. The listening place is where self and non self meet. I create images using a variety of printmaking techniques watching and responding to the image as it emerges. The mark making process has a level of unpredictability that means that no print is identical. Plate making has a sculptural and sensuous quality the image is explored intuitively being uncovered and exposed. The print is a shadow memory of the creative journey. It is said that every external journey has an internal reflection. My work is a personal record of my exploration of self and other, through journey and place. The narrative is articulated using the language of abstraction and metaphor.
The finished work requires a viewer. In fact the image demands to be seen as this is how it becomes alive. This is when a new narrative is forged between the image and others viewing it. The relationship developed between the image and viewers depends on an interplay and resonance between the image the viewers and their memories, dreams and experiences. The title of a piece may direct the viewer to make a specific relationship with it. I prefer the the relationship between the viewer and my work to be unmediated by titles, the ones I provide should be seen as my introduction of the image to the viewer. Roland Barthes describes what he calls the punctum in pictures it is an unintentional point in a picture that captures a viewer and arrests the gaze that was not intended by the by the artist. The punctum is the tiny shock, a satori a moment of connection.