By examining my surroundings I aim to highlight idiosyncratic situations and the everyday paraphernalia that we take for granted. Exploring the mundane life of a carpet, for example, is something I find challenging. Printmaking provides my main process; using drawn, found, photographic and digital material to create prints, artist's books, assemblages and illustrations. 

Text often functions as a starting point: a word on a city sign, trying to spell a sound, packaging, and a turn of phrase. The contents of a dusty book falling off a shelf in a second hand shop can give rise to various themes and ideas. Projects evolve from these starting points to shape a body of work or series.

Recent work can be divided into two projects: One concerns the act of smoking. Whether regarded as a relaxing pastime or lethal habit there is a historical gamut of associations - romance, glamour, intellectualism, status, defiance, mystery and so on. Drawing on these I have developed a graphic suite of screen prints exploring types and scenarios, from the posturing of pipe smokers to playing with the projected images in design, e.g. the cigar label. My aim is not to force a particular standpoint, but more to present the peculiarities in these associations to create work at a time where tobacco use is at the end of an era.

The second is ongoing work using ideas of getting from A to B, the pit falls, non-starters and spaces we move through to get there. The spaces are known and unknown, interruptions and changes occur there. These ideas have been developing for a few years and work was shown in Vancouver at the Malaspina Gallery at the end of 2004, in an exhibition of prints and wall mounted cut outs called,’Hither and Thither’. I recently began experimenting with multimedia (after artist training at ISIS in August) and aim to learn to create short simple Director animations using drawings related to the Hither and Thither work.

I would like to use AA2A opportunity at Newcastle University to explore the ongoing ideas of movement through spaces using the print facilities, especially utilizing lithography but also experimenting in other print areas to construct images on paper and other surfaces. In conjunction with this I would like to use the new media area to experiment further with Director, and to support any image creation necessary for print processes.

'Cutouts'