I am a Lancashire born/London based contemporary painter. My consistent focus for several years has been to experiment with the breadth of the spectrum between representation and abstraction. I explore the concept of examining organic and abstract forms, defined by negative space. Taking something that is not there, the space between things, and making that the subject of the paintings.

My work invites the viewer to look closely at what are essentially abstract shapes and marks, but I like to explore the way the brain visually tries to make sense of what it is seeing, to find recognisable information. In that way, abstract shapes that, close-up, appear to float above the painted background, then reform and recede as one steps back, they become ‘the background’. The brain rejigs what we are seeing and the white areas of negative space becomes recognisable as ‘light through leaves’.

In this way each series of work starts with a subject but progresses towards abstraction as I explore the subject and render it in two dimensions, examining line and shape, negative space and the effects of light, and as a result the link to the subject slowly becomes stretched and obscured to varying degrees.

I also enjoy examining opposites within my work; the contrast of loose, expressive brushstrokes overlaid with drawn lines and painstaking fine brush work; the play between positive and negative space, between foreground and background; the interplay of abstraction with the suggestion of representing something recognisable.