Artist’s Statement
A solid grounding in figurative drawing at Guildford School of Art in the late 1950s was an excellent foundation for other artforms, and enables my public art pieces to be easily understood. However when working for myself alone, the breadth of possibilities, complexity and implied meanings of abstraction are continually fascinating and engaging.
Working across a range of media, from fused glass, colourful mosaic and sculpture with hand-built and glazed ceramic to large-format digital prints, I’ve received many commissions for public and private spaces, and education projects, particularly in the eco and environmental art fields.
In fact, my very first public art pieces were the planets of our Solar System built in mosaics with much community involvement over 4 years at Oxtall Meadow Ecology Park, a groundbreaking initiative of Gosport Borough Council, Hants in the 1990s. They can still be seen today on Google maps!
The impact of waste, plastics and oil on our planet is a huge concern and I often focus on found and damaged objects in the work, drawing attention to the uniqueness of the things we ignore and discard, and the beauty in decay. There is extraordinary richness of shape and significance to be found in the undervalued fallen flower or plastic toy, changed by time.