Artist Statement

I’m a contemporary artist based near Burton on Trent. I paint in oil and am drawn to using line and colour to convey my relationship to my subject. My work is influenced by post impressionism, by artists such as Cezanne, Matisse and Vlaminck. I often paint landscapes and cityscapes from the local Derbyshire/Staffordshire area and am also inspired by other locations in the UK, especially the North Yorkshire coast.

Largely self-taught, I started painting when my children were small when and if time permitted. Over the past four years, I have been able to devote more time to my artistic career and was delighted to participate in Derbyshire Open Arts for the first time last year. Over the last two years, I have had two solo exhibitions at the Brewhouse in Burton and been exhibited twice at the RBSA. In 2023 I was selected as a finalist for the Broadway Open Arts Festival and my work was featured on the cover of the Air Arts magazine. I completed the Diploma in Oil Painting at the Norfolk Painting School in 2022.

I love the scope of oil paint to create textural effects and find that using brush and scrapers helps exploit that potential. I rarely paint using conventional perspective and am exploring the use of both flat and multiple perspective, incorporating some elements of cubism, in my latest work. I continue to explore the boundary between figurative work and abstraction.