Artists Statement
My work has developed from the images of revolution painted as a student, of Guevara, Stalin and Mao sitting alongside a GI carrying a child at the time of the Vietnam War, to the political dimension of today, for example exploring images of refugees in a series of drawings and mono prints entitled ‘Asylum’. I believe that this work questions assumptions about humanitarian issues and deconstructs what it is to be a migrant and vulnerable and my emotional response to this. More recently the work of Schiele, O’Keefe, Hockney and the Abstract Expressionists have captured my attention and made me think more carefully about how I interpret my perceived world, the appropriateness of the medium, use of colour and the shapes and marks this elicits on paper. I am striving to learn, to develop my own style, to challenge my own prejudices and to be authentic in what I draw, paint and print. Even after forty years the challenge of learning new techniques, improving my skills and experimenting with different media adds to the excitement of my journey as an artist I want to improve as an artist, and through my work as a professional artist to make a contribution to an understanding of the world we inhabit politically, socially and the relationship these have with our environment. |
The art of becoming often requires us to embrace ugliness, pain and destruction on the path to richer existence and greater truth…truth is ugly and art saves us from perishing of the ugly truth’ Nietzche (Twilight of the Idols 1889).
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