My work explores my own relationship with the collection of “knick-knacks and do-das” that I have amassed over my lifetime and the joy I find in both the process of collecting and the individual objects themselves.  My work also explores the notion of painting happiness and conveying joy.  This work has come out of my personal process of grief.  Where I previously made work to communicate that grief to others, I now want to focus on the small joys that I find in life.  Both of my parents are former archeologists so I was surrounded by objects that they had unearthed and taken home from their digs which is the catalyst for my love of the history and life cycle of the pieces that I have collected from charity shops, antique shops and received as gifts from loved ones etc.

The practice that has come out of this is a collection of abstract paintings representing still lives that I have created from my personal collections.  The work consists of quick and simple gestures made with paint brushes and acrylic paint as abstract representations.  Abstracting from objects that only I have a personal connection with which allows for a spectator to focus on the feeling that the collections produce.  I work with acrylic on canvas.  I use acrylic because of the plasticity, vibrancy of colours, range of textures and the ways that it can be manipulated.  I use canvas that is primed but not sanded because of the added layer of texture this can create when interacting with acrylic paint.  It also allows for the canvas to become part of the painting and not simply what the painting is sitting on top of.

My work is influenced by the writing of American author Ursula le Guin, conceptualism and abstract artist V? to name a few of my influences.  A quote from le Guin that I read for the first time many years ago has come to be central to my practice,

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.”.

My research into le Guin also led me to her ‘Carrier Bag Theory’ which became central to the way that I think about my work and how a painting holds love and care.  This love is central to my practice. It is the heart of my practice.  The love of little things.  The love of small joys.