Often to be found on the shore...

I spend time outside, in specific environments that speak of thresholds, the Orkney shore both on Mainland and other Orkney islands, and more recently a local wooden boat builders workshop. 

Pencil, ink and watercolour drawings help me to make sense of what I experience here, between the land, the sky and the sea.  These sketches are responses both to the seen and unseen elements of being here, the emotional and spiritual as well as the visual and often visceral weather!  Curiosity about the details, in a pebble that I find for example, can then explain something more of the enormity of the landscape.  The ebb and flow of movement of that particular day is observed and recorded, together with the layers of ancient time found in rock, wood and wave.   

Back in the studio, working with the fluidity of paint (acrylic primarily) I instinctively create works from these experiences.  Paintings that hold together the seen and the unseen, the macro and the micro and provide a space for meanings to be made.