I see my Etsy shop as part of an evolving socially engaged art practice. I don't like the idea of just having a shop without a purpose. When I am not taking some quiet time to do my own fine art making and research practice, I am a creative agent, creating projects that engage the community here in Wales with arts and culture and help young people learn whatever they need using the arts as a way to open their minds.
I will use any sales here to make ends meet so that I be free to spend my time getting out into the communitiy to work with others to use the arts to give them a voice. So I hope you will join my journey and become part of creating your own stories from the work you buy from me. I would like you to be able to tell your friends and family that the work is not only pleasing to have around but that it supports an artist who is trying to make a difference to young people's lives and how you might take part in that. That we can all unravel our lives and re-invent ourselves, changing perspective at any time if we learn to look at things differently.
To make room for my latest work, in my overwhelmingly full studio (I have not attempted to sell before) I decided to give my early work some air and a new lease of life. I want my fragments to go out into the world. The process of letting them go is enabling me to continue on my quest to make work that can open up conversations about necessary change and transformation.
Each work has a context and many sketchbooks notes that support it, which I will try and share with you for your piece when I uncover the sketchbooks in the mass of material I have.
Buying a piece of work from me supports me to develop my 'archive practice' too. I am inspired by Walter Benjamin's archive and fragments and moments, including these are a part of that.
I realise now that when I first left school and studied Business Studies, my first work experience was working with the newly formed Milton Keynes Development Corporation - in their archives - I can't say I enjoyed it, but it has now come full circle.
I trained as a chartered accountant, qualifying with KPMG in June 1991, and became a business transformation consultant. Systems and processes have always interested me and I loved making process diagrams and working out how businesses worked. Feeling that I wanted to be more creative about how to make diagrams about business and a need to connect with nature and the eco-systems outside of the air conditioned offices full of stress and impossible deadlines, I left with an idea that I needed to go to art college. I started a part-time 5 year fine art degree at the Surrey Institute of Art & Design in 1999 until 2004. The work I am puting on this site are the traces of that time that enabled me to process and untangle my business life, find a pathway during the making of my degree work, these are like meditations of my journey. My practice has developed into a socially engaged practice, about ideas of work, labour and social responsibility. In 2021 I completed my MA in Fine Art at Liverpool John Moores - John Lennon School of Art & Design and discovered how I could make work that combined all the elements I love 'Soil, Systems and Sensitivities'.
