The artist's statement

My work has always been involved with people, but over time this has evolved from simple studies of their outward characteristics, to the point where I am now more concerned with how they are internally constructed. Rather than look just at how they are situated in the communities and events in which they exist, I am now also concerned with how they are created through the process of storytelling, and the imaginary worlds in which these take place.

Although these locations may be full of stereotypical themes and images, the fact is that they are translatable into everyday occurrences, and it is this that allows them the power to guide and inform us in our day-to-day lives. These themes extend into my work, which seeks to take these ideas and twist and remould them into scenes that are both familiar, whilst at the same time strange and alien. By doing so I hope to make the viewer not only re-judge what they take for granted, but also to help them to see below the surface of the world in which they live, and ultimately below the surface of themselves.

This confrontation then is the essence of my work, to not only believe what we see but also to question what we don’t, and to explore why we are fitted with this inbuilt sense of habitus, the lived experience which we are not even aware of until it is brought to the front of our mind where we can see and confront it. If by looking at my work the viewer becomes lost in the picture or the ideas that it represents, then I would feel that the sense of wonder which is all too easily mislaid in our lives may become reinstated, even if it is just for a brief moment of time.