Mam Aotearoa

My drawing practice consists of a desk under a window, a luscious piece of paper, pens, pencils, paint and ink.

I am ultimately interested in what emerges from the page as I meditatively and intuitively make my marks. I have a very loose approach to a blank piece of paper with pen in hand. I liken my process to a treasure hunt and relish the emergence of shape and form which then gives birth to transformative action.

My drawings are a mix of abstraction and representation, I rather ‘find and see’ than ‘think and plan’. There is a point however, where the drawing will suggest itself, a hook on which to hang the next move but this rarely follows a logical conclusion. Mistakes are made and I have to find a way through them, I have to integrate them into the drawing, it is a very mutable and exciting experience and therein lies the pleasure.

I love wit, words, scattering cutout shapes over the page and rolling paint over them, playing with negative spaces, layering for texture and using intense colour fields to give a greasy unctuousness.

More recently I have been attracted to 2D cutouts and plan to experiment more with this process.