This piece is made with oak gall ink on Fabriano watercolour paper, it is part of a large on-going series.

In 2017 I began to develop this project further during an artist residency at the Elysium Gallery project space in Swansea, Wales. In 2018 a piece of work titled Treasure In Stillness won 1st prize at the Glynn Vivian Open.

This led to an invitation by G.S. Artists to take part in their Artist Working programme, a month long residency in a large studio. I received an Arts Council Wales research & development grant to develop the project.

All three of these opportunities have had a huge impact on my creative practice for which I am very grateful.

Prior to this, I lived in an ancient eighty-acre Welsh oak woodland, off-grid, for a number of years. I was utterly immersed in the experience of being in the woodland.

It was here that I discovered that ink could be made using oak galls and started exploring the possibilities of this very luxurious and sensual material – nick-named ink of Kings, Poets and Monks.

I wanted to make work ‘of the woodland’, I explored the process and chemistry of making the ink and thereby developed my own technique of making and using it. I find the oak gall ink very exciting and with the techniques that I have discovered am looking to create a shimmer, a vibration through using close tones, using the support as light source as well as colour experience.

I am intrigued by the idea that opposites are always present and attempt to paint contradictions of personality and situation. I am interested in differences of rhythm, tempo and repetition, and how they produce irregularity in marks, layers; also colours and their inherent instability.

All these contradict the inherent flatness of paintings and this is where I seek to explore the possibilities and impossibilities of expressing these liminal moments in paint.

The work is glazed and framed with a simple white painted wooden band.

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