Artist Statement
I am fascinated by the idea of process and construction. My starting point of photographing construction/demolition sites, civil engineering projects and man-made structures draw me towards places where the man-made environment meets the natural, particularly when one has an effect on the other, capturing a moment of transformation.
My work is dominated by dynamic compositions and contrasts, bold use of acrylic paint, colour and varied techniques. I assemble my paintings using ordered processes utilising the interplay between control and unpredictability. I occasionally include serial numbers to remind myself that the finished whole is greater than the sum of it's parts.
I have always enjoyed finding ways to engage with people that view my work, be it, creating a chair that is a book, a mirror that is a picture, and even a bridge that is a rainbow, and maybe a collage made up of old work and found objects. A literal description leaves it open for the viewer to interpret any inferred metaphor in their own way and time.
'Numerical drag'
The photograph used in this piece was taken with the cooperation of british aerospace . The image used has originated from a series of photographs I took on location at airbus Broughton, just outside Chester, in North Wales. At that point they were building a giant shed in which to build wings for airbus which was at that point the largest building under construction in Europe. The A380 wings, which are too large to travel on the fleet of five Beluga aircraft, leave the Broughton factory on a transporter heading for the River Dee. There, they are transferred onboard the Afon Dyfrdwy barge for the 35km journey to Mostyn. It is quite a spectacle.
Looking for that image
I like my photographs to stand up in their own right in terms of composition and content but as well as that I want them to provide me with that spur or inspiration that makes me want to include it in or produce a painting. I get very excited at the discovery of the internal workings of a building or structure, which may be found during the process of construction or tantalisingly revealed through the process of decay as the superficial fascia falls away and it's relationship with nature alters.
Greenfield Valley Heritage Park
Situated in Holywell, North Wales, this is somewhere I shall and have visited time and time again, each time finding something new to photograph. It consists of a series of redundant industrial developments set in a staircase of small lakes that once powered them. The enterprise was started up by Monks and then expanded greatly during the industrial revolution. There were Ropeworks, copperworks, wireworks, and paperworks to name but a few.
“Many people are still looking for an identifiable representation of the subject in abstract art, a kind of visual illusion in paint.
‘This is to misunderstand the artists’s intention. The painting is the subject, to be enjoyed and experienced for itself, and at the same time communicating something alive and meaningful in terms of associated sensations, ideas and concepts.’”