I’m a Scottish artist living on the Isle of Portland and in Bath. My hunger for contrast is found in both of these very distinct, diverse places. I feel my system is rebooted, and a new perspective, fresh emotional space is created (uploaded) every time my eyes and heart travel between and explore these two different cultures and environments.
The mysterious, barren landscape of the Jurassic peninsula slightly disturbs...wakening, stirring the senses with its otherworldly light, biblical waters and a haunting primordial atmosphere. Calling out to the continent and hanging onto Britain by just a 'pebbled (Chesil beach) thread' - a strange liminal space where different worlds and atmospheres converge - Portland has an edge, a raw honesty..refreshingly unfiltered and not a whiff of gentrification. Like the many weather battered window frames and their peeling paintwork, any superficiality or embellishment has been stripped away. Pretentiousness does not settle on these shores.
Quarried for its famous stone, the scarred rocks reveal archaic footprints within their layers -'whispering voices', making visible, the otherwise invisible, ghosts from a prehistoric past. Symbolic treasures like the Ammonite spiral buried in the soil and psyche remind us that everything is transient, and we too shall pass, eventually transformed into something other. How we live today will have an impact on tomorrow, so too leaving our trace in the Earth’s DNA. An open book and ongoing dialogue between man and nature - there is a physical and subliminal code embedded in our environment. We are part of this 'language' and conversation; responsible for shaping - depleting or enriching - it, and our planet, for future generations.
In contrast to Portland's harsh, exposed coastal environment and dangerous seas, the Roman Spa town of Bath is a safe haven, cradled in a soft Somerset basin. Immersed in, surrounded and protected by, its gent(i)le landscape, folk and fauna. This tourist destination blends in harmonious splendour with the elegant Georgian architecture, helping keep its theatrical facade alive. Buoyant with intoxication, it floats like a bubble in time and space, with hot air balloons that dot the skyline on balmy summer evenings. Famous also for the quality and light of its limestone - appropriately soft in contrast to Portland's hard - the city emits, and bathes in, a glorious golden glow as the sun sets. Senses are saturated, soothed to a drunken dreamy state.. It allows a sanctuary, to find solace away from the dirt and grime of a less 'perfumed' and privileged society/lifestyle. This of course means being select. Turning a blind eye to the darker side of Bath, often where struggling, lost and homeless souls' are sequestered into the shadows. They seek an alternative 'sanctuary' - along the river, under bridges and stagnant backwaters, mopping up the over-spill of a 'good life'. But the Georgian city hosts a plethora of riches staged within its curated culture and facade; their jewelled distractions making an 'easier and more comfortable' deviation, especially if wearing blinkers or rose-coloured specs on an upturned nose. One can breathe easily here, or suffocate in the comfort of it all...
What inspires and disturbs me in both places, all places, is contrast. Contrast lying beneath the surface, hidden within the corners and layers of nature and society. The people, place, race, colour and creed - rich and poor - the biodiversity found in everything. The duality, contradictions and tensions which coexist there; questions left unanswered, emotions, sensations evoked - are all elements which permeate my art. I suppose the desire to unify and bring everything together in harmony, rather than underline any differences, is what shapes how I communicate and express myself creatively.
I suppose found in these 'worlds within worlds' hidden between the cracks and scars, there has been a similar theme of contrasts which have echoed throughout my work over the years. Suggestions of the ephemeral, other 'dimensions' and what lies beneath the surface..Reoccurring images such as spheres, man, biodiversity and nature: hint at how everything connects - mother earth's delicate web and her cry to humanity for balance and harmony.
Oscillation between detail and space, illustration and abstract.. masculine and feminine energies (lines, geometric shapes versa spheres and curves). The 'tuning' process: tension and balance found, created - a rhythm or discord - between these opposites. The invisible layers and geology of our environment. A desire to extract the jewels found within those spaces, to capture detail..or merely the suggestion of...Ghostly, ethereal images emerge and float to the surface...some 'transparent', some opaque..others lie just beneath, hiding in the shadows.. subliminal chords tug/pull at the soul ..transmitting..tuning in and out...birth and then disintegration..a reminder that everything is in the process of flux and change..and we are all part of, and feeding back into the cycle of life, and something much bigger.... Hopefully the eye can Zoom in and pull out 'anchoring' detail for something more tangible, and in the process connect to something more sublime.
Maybe a desire to tap/tune into and capture certain wavelengths is a symbiotic process: synergizing emotions with the stroke of a paint brush - conducting through my work (what feels to be) a higher energy. Like an exchange - fusion of data and frequency - both osmosis and osmosis in reverse; an attempt to maintain a regenerative process during that - creating new life and energy during the cycle of its birth and eventual death - immortalises whatever is communicated onto canvas. The images that emerge allow me to connect with and channel different layers of the soul and psyche, to help understand the duality - complex and simple systems - of our existence/nature, echoed in the perpetual, kaleidoscopic patterns unfolding around us.
The stimuli, initial conflict and eventual balance, gained from marrying the opposites. The tenuous link between tension and harmony created between detail and space, so too between light and shade, male and female..yin and yang - becomes for me as an artist an often uncomfortable (but ultimately liberating) dance on canvas. The music/energy courses, flows and reverberates through my system. Colour, shape, line, the light and the dark are layered and marked like vibrations / ‘notes’ on sheet music, which can either resonate (with) or disturb the soul. I am still learning when to add, but more importantly what to let go of. What is left unsaid or 'staccato' often keeps its power and magic, expressing more than words or images can convey. I've said too much already.