I am a Glasgow-based painter who uses oil paint to depict emotional and psychological landscapes. My paintings are often populated by oversized and cramped figures that seem alienated in the spaces they find themselves in.

My practice explores how we can understand ourselves through space and how it might be to feel, alienated, excluded and disoriented in this means of understanding.  In these compositions, the figures are only seen in small fragments, implying that they extend far beyond the borders of the painting. My work incorporates elements of the theatre and the stage, implying a pretence and performance to the installations. The figures face away from the viewer, keeping their whereabouts and what they are doing secret. My paintings are not built to be understood through one obvious perspective but instead hope to inspire many possible and opposing readings.

Central to my work is tension. Whether it is the polarity between the strange and the beautiful, the eerie and the innocent or in the struggle that I have with the paint itself. I use the layers and layers of mistakes, discarded compositions and colours to find the image, I want the paintings to buzz with this tension.

Whilst my work most prominently sits on the painted picture plane, I also use sculptural elements – textiles, metal and wood to extend the paintings off the wall and into space. I do this to immerse the viewer and create the sensation that they have walked into the painting’s world.

In my work, nothing is entirely defined or distinct but instead, everything blurs, each shape merging and becoming another. It seems as though nothing is securely held in its place but is perhaps shape-shifting and about to float off. It is in the struggle between definition and obscurity that the heart of my practice is found.