Fine Art projects

How do we visualize time? The experience of motherhood has been described as situating women outside the boundaries of linear, modernist time resulting in potentially a loss of agency (being unable to fit into the working world, for example) and being constrained to a ‘nether-land’ or liminal time and space until ‘normal time’ is returned

Using the idea of the ‘instant garden’ created when a richly floral carpet was thrown to the ground in ancient Persia, I create a new kind of ‘garden’ using composite images of industrially grown flowers. The result is a product of a slow, ponderous process of assembling ‘pieces’. The soft lighting, reminiscent of Dutch Still Life paintings, is used to enhance a sense of distance and deep space as the “real” flower is converted through software into the flower symbol found in many ancient decorative arts.

Tidy Street, in the heart of Brighton’s North Laine, was turned into a large scale public gallery for the duration of the Brighton Photo Fringe, October, 2006 in a project with residents by photographic artist Lisa Creagh.

This series slowly evolved out of my sketchbooks as a coherent set of individual 'masks'. Heavily influenced by Shamanic masks of the American Northwest, they began as one or two attempts to emulate the iconic power of actual tribal masks at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Using the same compositions, I updated these ritualistic objects with modern emblems of power from air travel, architecture, casinos, advertising displays.

Lost in Wonderland, however, is a study of the tunnel and the internal psychological shifts that take place in the creative process of occupying the space ‘between worlds’. It seems to me no accident that Alice is of a certain age, between childhood and adolescence, when the magical mind is still open, yet the brain is able to reason. The imaginative power of children – their ability to believe in new worlds with seemingly little stimulus is surely the inspiration for Carroll’s magical story.

Inspired by the film '2001: A Space Odyssey', Ulysses, Drum and Bass music, and emerging ideas around virtual reality, Escape Routes was based on the idea of the city as a labyrinth, with rites of passage, and transformations existing in journeys within its borders. The series incorporates abstract, figurative and landscape images, using multiple mediums to create digital collages, oil paintings and an edition of C-Type hand prints.

A series of 'blind' self portraits examining how 'self' can be discovered or invented with the use of mirrors, water and other liquids.

This project originated in manipulated Bernini sculptures. Taking images of these Renaissance marbles, each was stretched using a photocopier technique. These were collages back together and then photocopied onto acetate. The final work was an installation of a sheet of safety glass with acetate images beneath. Once in place, the glass was broken in the centre using a sledgehammer.

An archive of photographic, collage, drawing and painting