Artists Bio

I’m an abstract artist based in Devon. After graduating from art school in the early 2000s, I moved to London & found myself running a busy kitchen in Primrose Hill, thriving on the creativity and immediacy of cooking, loving the pace, late nights & camaraderie of the professional kitchen. 

I ended up staying in London for 10 years & throughout that time visited as many galleries & exhibitions as I could, discovering artists who have continued to influence me; Cy Twombly, Miró, Basquiat, Ellsworth Kelly, Paul Klee, David Hockney, amongst many others!  During this time I never stopped drawing.

I still cook for a living but have recently managed to carve out time for painting, something I always knew I would do. The drive to make work has always been there and I now spend as much time as possible in my studio.

My work explores colour, shape, texture and balance. I use acrylics to achieve areas of perfect colour, contrasted with the rougher, more expressive marks of oil bar and chalk. Layers of line in pen or pencil add further depth. What appears simple is the result of careful consideration, built up over time & with different mediums.

My palette is rooted in close observation of nature; the greens of lichen, moss & spring leaves, the multitude of greys found in pebbles, sugary, neon skies against dark, earthy horizons, stormy clouds & bright blue seas. Although the paintings often read as purely abstract, their colours & forms are frequently drawn from nature.

I often use geometric shapes as a starting point & find these perfect orderly forms grounding, in contrast to the freer, more chaotic marks, painterly abstract brush strokes, wobbly lines, scratches & scribbles.

To sum up, my work is about balance of colour, texture & form. I’m striving to draw the eye, for the viewer to feel intrigued, rested, amused, happy, calm, or anything at all really.