If my work is about anything, I think it may be an attempt to express vague musings about the passage of time made corporeal through certain images and surfaces. When I say I only think the work may have something to do with the comprehension of time, however, it is because one can never be fully explicit about any work of art. There is always something at one remove, something which cannot quite be pinned down. All the constructs in art we build to describe a thought or feeling are, of necessity, parts of the map and not the territory.
According to the Maurice Denis dictum, 'before being a horse, a nude or some sort of anecdote, a work of art is essentially a flat surface covered with colours assembled in a certain order'. So, first and foremost, I suppose my work is essentially about the material I use, assembled in a certain order, torn, stained, scratched or etched into.
I use card that has previously been used as packaging and then discarded. I am not interested in impact as such, but work that reveals itself over time.
I like the idea of working with slate because of the age and nature of the material. Slate is of sedimentary origin, formed from the deposits of minerals collected on the beds of ancient seas millions of years ago. Movement of the earth's crust, retreating seas or whatever, eventually pushed these ancient sea beds to the surface where their deposits were quarried by man to provide shelter from the winds and the rain. I like handling this material, and the way in which the surface has been worn by its exposure to the elements and marked by human made deposits into the atmosphere. I am interested in the journey from the sea bed to the quarry, from the quarry to the roof top and from the roof top to the art work. To this extent the pieces are about the slate itself but I am also, again, attempting to evoke some feeling of time, ancient landscapes perhaps; something elemental but without any New Age mysticism attached.
Writing about Richard Diebenkorn’s ‘Ocean Park’ series of paintings, Robert Hughes wrote that one heard 'neither the chant of surging millions, nor even the chorus of a movement, but one measured voice, quietly and tersely explaining why this light, this colour, this intrusion of a 30 degree angle into a glazed and modulated field might be valuable in the life of the mind and of feeling.'
I am interested in the life of the mind and of feeling, but, nevertheless, people confronting the work will make of it what they will.
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