I’m interested in painting as a way of saying things about the material world, and see painting as a process of thinking and communicating. I collect material by walking and making sketches, photographs and sound recordings; back in the studio this becomes the impetus for abstract and semi-abstract painting. Painting is often absent from considerations of eco-based art, but I like to think the medium of painting can give expression to the materiality of the environment and its concerns, just as ‘new nature writing’ is doing in literature and criticism. These approaches lend voice to the view that it may no longer be useful to think in terms of separable opposites like ‘natural/man-made’ or ‘human/nonhuman’ but to consider the inextricability of these concepts one from the other.
Dean Clough Gallery, Halifax
NewBridge Project, Newcastle