In essence my practice centres around the idea of aural story telling focusing on locality, the everyday and the mundane. A lot of my work revolves around domestic scenes as I believe this is accessible to most. Working interdisciplinary allows me to explore these ideas through mediums that capture individual themes best.

Typically, the stories I work from are familial tales that I heard growing up in a village. I have been looking at British class culture particularly of the 1980’s. My parents grew up in the 80’s so a lot of the stories are about them as children. Looking at Martin Pars realist photography helps me create a richer and more detailed imagined view of the 80’s. Ideas of nostalgia have been my main concern during this stage. Svetlana Boym’s term reflective nostalgia looks at the idea of nostalgia being playful and because the past can never be recovered it looks at the past almost a fantasy. Looking back on the past through rose tinted glasses is how I would describe my artworks. I turn these stories into prints as well as paintings I then turn elements of paintings into ceramic shapes. These will then be shown in an installation format.

I work on being playful in my practice adding humour and not taking anything to seriously. I see my practice as almost an act of translation, turning the aural stories into a visual language. This then links with the idea of printmaking. Where you work on changing an image from one medium to another. Once the story has been filtered through me and my personal experiences it becomes more ambiguous and often exaggerated. This then expands the parameters and allows for more surreal and uncanny elements, playing with the perspective and space to create a unique world. I draw in a loose playful way which goes hand in hand with the mundane, playful subject matter. I sketch whilst listening to the verbatim recording, then draw from the drawing which makes the image more playful and I worry less about the image becoming an accurate depiction. My work isn’t an accurate reconstruction of the past but a subjective romantised fantasy.

I work from instinct and intuition a lot. I focus on bringing expression and liveliness into my artworks. I often work with the same imagery in repeated motifs that are used within all my artworks creating a visual language. I work quickly when painting using bold colours and set time limits to stop myself from overwhelming the canvas. I have found that leaving areas uncovered and also drawing with coloured pencil creates a livelier atmosphere.

In terms of the ceramics, the materiality of the shapes are abstracted forms taken from my paintings. Repeated motifs are important into my work and this is a big part of my 3D forms. I want the viewer to see the links between the paintings and shapes. I have glazed them in the same pallet of my paintings -lime green, purple, pink, light blue and orange – using these specific shapes further strengthens the link between the forms and my paintings.