This page shows a selection of work from the series’ titled - Portal, Oceanic State, Boundaries, Mapping and Shroud, which are all are included in my solo exhibition at Elysium Gallery in Swansea, Wales 20th May - 1st July 2023.

All pigments used in this exhibition are botanical colour to make inks, paints and dyes.

Portal Series

These works in particular relate to the ocean. I have always had a strong connection to the sea. They are about breathing, about what we yearn for, and the space created when being caught off guard by something which takes us away from our physical reality for a moment; a meditation, a portal. They are also about beauty and time.

I think of these painting as having a timeless quality, of evoking something of the eternal, works that you can just ‘be’ with, perhaps meditate with, become.

Oceanic State Series

In a letter to Freud, French writer Romain Rolland coined the term ‘oceanic feeling’, it describes a feeling of limitlessness, the eternal, an expansion of consciousness beyond one’s body. In her book The Other Side, Jennifer Higgie refers to it and talks of ‘oceanic states’. I really like the term and so took it for a title.

Boundaries Series

A series using monotype and drawing with different botanical inks.

Mapping Series

Shroud series

This a series which was made in response to the devastating disease ash dieback which is destroying our majestic and important native ash tree.

Please do Get in touch regarding availability, prices and galleries, we can discuss what you might like and I can send out further details..

My story behind using plants to create colour.

For a number of years, I lived in an ancient eighty-acre Welsh oak woodland, off-grid. I was utterly immersed in the experience of being in the woodland. Searching for ways to make my creative practice more sustainable, I wanted to make work ‘of the woodland’. It was here that I discovered that ink could be made using oak galls and started to explore the possibilities of this very luxurious and sensual material – nick-named ink of Kings, Poets and Monks. Exploring the process and chemistry of ink making, I thereby developed my own techniques of making and using it. It is a very exciting alchemical feeling process.

This journey using oak gall ink started in 2011. In 2020, I broadened my palette by foraging (sustainably) for other plant colours; colours used in natural dyes. I also created a colour garden with a large bed for specifically growing plants to extract colour from.

I am intrigued by the idea that opposites are always present, am interested in differences of rhythm, tempo and repetition, and how they produce irregularity in marks and layers. All of 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.

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