Man made structures impose their presence on the sky; power lines, bridges and lamp posts disrupt the horizon. Sharp edges of construction window frame our perspectives:

The landscape is my starting point, not as a picturesque static view, but as a space travelled through and experienced often on the edges of the urban and the rural. It is a source of man made and natural structures, surfaces and colour that allow me to construct my own pared down responses to capture memories of land and sky and the marks we make upon them.

I make drawings of remembered details seen from the corner of my eye, fleeting juxtapositions elusive to photography or more studied compositions. These feel like a search for my own language of marks, signs and symbols to bring order, balance and control to an often chaotic visual world. Man made structures, in particular, impose their presence on the sky: power lines, telegraph poles, fences, bridges, cut hedges, an isolated building.

At the painting stage, in contrast to these drawn linear elements, my work is influenced by the effects of time, weather and decay, from details to distant horizons. I feel there is a poetic beauty in rusting metal, worn paint work, the opaque white sky of northern England. The observed leads into a more imagined, intuitive approach. Process in itself also becomes important; a two way process where the painting becomes an entity in itself. I use plaster, gesso, paint and collage to create subtle tactile surfaces framed by sharp, yet eroded edges. Sometimes layers of colour are washed away and reapplied many times. Structured and methodical approaches combined with spontaneous and intuitive reactions allow me to plan and take risks: to combine control with ‘let‘s see what happens if…’