Artist Statement:

My practice involves the observation of traces and imprints in the coastline, the marks of both natural processes and human interventions. I explore impermanence and mutability by investigating residual marks in the environment following severe weather events. My paintings seek out the unexpected in the landscape – incongruous objects and situations that are the result of natural processes and human actions. A discarded bicycle gear interrupts the natural beauty of the place. Unravelling fibres of rope possess strangely organic characteristics. Plastic strands, deadly to marine life, ironically generate diaphanous forms that float elusively in the water.

My approach involves working with layered processes that reflect the mutability and temporality of a fragile environment. Perception of local memory, embedded and submerged, resurfaces and is exposed in personal belongings as the terrain disintegrates and subsides. Fragments of crockery and broken bottles jut out of the sand. Walking is interrupted by tilting fence posts, collapsing dunes and scattered fragments of corroded metal. Coils of wire, flex cable, netting and splintered wooden planks lie in the sand. These items linger on the beach, traces and imprints of the processes of a changing climate.

As I walk the coastline I become aware of the entanglements of the natural and the manmade - the pernicious inseparability of materials such as plastic and seaweed, wire and grass. I explore the incongruity of manmade materials which assume the appearance of organic forms throughout the painting process. These forms mutate into evocations of the entanglement of mankind and the natural world.