I am a British-born artist currently residing in the in the U.S.A. I moved to South Africa as a young child.   I was educated in at Rhodes University, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts with distinction in painting. After leaving Rhodes University, I went on to complete an MFA (cum laude) at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. My thesis was entitled “Tactility, Illusionism and the Depiction of Flesh in Selected Contemporary Painting”. Focusing on the work of Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud, I discussed how painting that gives an illusion of external reality can often induce powerful tactile sensations in the viewer. My hypothesis was that through a particular painting process, during which the artist responds in a bodily way to viewed objects, a certain textural paint mark can be produced. This is true of my own painting process, and, when achieved, makes the difference between a merely clever work and a truly passionate one.

1. Tactility: desire and denial

My work focuses on theatrical figures whose separation from an implied audience is undermined by the tactile presence of these figures, exploring the theme of desire and denial. The figures are representative of imagined characters in a performance that is intimate, confidential, exposed, with the audience’s response being one of wanting to possess the unpossessible.  The figures are unattainable to the viewer as actual persons by their physical reality as paint on canvas or paper, yet the emotional quality and tactile presence of the figures invites the viewer to believe in the reality of the “life” of the figure.  It echoes mass celebrity obsession, where the famous are presented through various mediums (layers of unreality and unattainablity) directly adverse to the tantalizingly intimate and confidential manner of their presented selves.  The madness of unfulfilled desire for possessing that which cannot be had ensues.  The figures in my work embody this madness of wanting at the same time as presenting those wanted or desired.

2. The value of Traditionalism

My work advocates the great importance of traditional painting, printmaking, drawing and sculpture as contemporary art forms.  My work eschews, to a large extent, the pursuit of the new for its own sake.  I find that many aspects of traditional artistic expression are valuable components to realising my personal creative solutions.  I believe that traditional painting, printmaking, drawing and sculpture (in other words, art which is not ostentatiously avant-garde, and which values drawing and realism ) continues to have a forceful contemporary relevance. 

3. Inherited and created identity

My work is an expression of identity through the making of art, exploring a changing understanding of myself as a woman and artist.  I explore, through the organic, unplanned development of my paintings, my identity as imposed on myself through circumstances beyond my control such as national, family, and gender related aspects.  

4. The painted doll

I explore the possible correlation between creating an image of an imagined figure as an adult artist and the act, as a child, of playing with dolls, or similar props that support an imagined child’s world.  My work often follows the path of the theatrical – imagined figures in an imagined world, and often has the direct influence of theatre.