I work with painting and printmaking to investigate our tangled and shifting relationship with matter. Materials transform: new forms and complex patterns emerging from simple physical processes such as erosion, compression, fracture and flow. How do we interact with and make sense of these material metamorphoses?
I am particularly interested in the way human-made things are transformed by physical processes, obscuring their original function and making more apparent their similarity to biological and geological forms. I collect specimens of this un-natural history, for example, objects eroded by the sea, smashed or squashed flat on the streets of London. I then transform them further using the etching and pressing processes of print, drawing visual connections with natural history collections and illustrations.
In my painting, I interact with the dynamic, generative properties of paint, allowing the paint to flow, erode and fracture as it dries and responding to the patterns that emerge. Although a manufactured product, the material properties of paint mean that it is shaped by similar processes to those that shape the natural world, creating paint-scapes that are analogous to, but not representations of, landscapes, bodies or things.