Premio Combat Prize

The most ordinary of places can suddenly be changed by an effect of light. When we hurry around busy with our everyday lives, weaving our own stories, we can ignore the fact that we are part of a greater whole. But there are still moments when nature makes us recall our inter-connectedness, when we stop and look in wonder and awe. A rainbow in the city is just one of those moments, which is why the title of this work is ‘Sky Gift’.
The initial layers of colour, shape and texture give areas of the composition a sense of movement or stability and show through subsequent layers to influence the final composition. The work can be appreciated from a distance for its imagery and use of perspective and near to for its surface qualities. Collaged materials have their own shallow depth and textural interest, enhanced by paint qualities such as thick opaque colour or transparent liquid or glazed colour. The use of in-focus and blurred elements lead the eye around the composition like visual ‘hide and seek’. Some areas are refined with careful control and others through expression and mark making.
My interest in the landscape has been reignited by my move to Italy, a country which deservedly can be called ‘Il bel paese’, but perhaps my first contact with a landscape that offered the mood of the sublime, was through visiting and sketching the Dartmoor and Cornish landscapes near to where I studied at Exeter Art College. Interpreting what I saw using the process of etching and in particular the aquatint technique I would create a painterly range of tones and contrasts by brushing acid across the plate’s surface inter weaving traces of brushed gestures. On completing my degree, I worked with other students to set up a printmakers’ studio and partook in group exhibitions and exhibited in my home town, Epsom.
During the few years that I lived in Guernsey and afterwards on the Wirral I took the opportunity to explore the use of watercolour. Whereas finally settling back around London, it gave me the time and space I needed to develop a path of interest, to work on larger scale work and to explore using oils. I exhibited along the Kings Road in London and was involved in the Surrey Open Studio project. In discussion with an artist friends, we spoke about the importance of the balance between expression and refinement.
Wanting a stable career to work alongside my Fine Art practice, I chose to go into teaching. I believe that the two careers compliment each other. Encouraging others to practice, explore and discover new ways of interpreting what they see and how they understand the world has been a constant reminder to me that this is a life-long task.
My move to Italy has enabled me to review the discussions I had with artist friends. It is very much a part of the Italian culture, the ability to develop, refine and improve on what has gone before. For me it has been a great learning opportunity to synthesize the UK teaching ideals of risk and expressive gesture with the Italian ideals of structure and refinement. My interest has been in paint and surface qualities and to search for a means to retain a sense of energy and spontaneity, but also to create a depth of refinement and surface quality that feels fulfilling and satisfying. Each painting is a careful balance between the use of gesture and the reworking and layering of the surface to compose colour, tone and texture.