Artists Statement
My paintings are an exploration of landscapes and how they connect to notions of displacement or belonging. My works are predominantly small-scale oil paintings on paper in which paint is obscured and mixed with opposing mediums. As the paint drips and separates, strange shapes emerge which often resemble gnarly trees and craggy hills. Details such as houses, pylons and birds can be found in amongst the markings.
The starting point for many of my works are stories, both fictional and reality. The poem titled Fable by WW2 poet Janos Pilinszky has played a central role in my work. Pilinszky wrote a stark but haunting portrayal of a lonely wolf as a refugee, and many of my paintings are imagined landscapes I envisage the wolf travelling through, trying to find somewhere called home. In these works, I seek to reflect both the dreams of the wolf and a tragic ending that lay unknown before him.
More recently my work has been considering similar stories from my own family, tales of life as a refugee post WW2 in Germany and Holland, with stories of ‘home’ being transient and something searched for. Germany’s culture is laden with folklore; the landscapes are steeped with dark tales both real and fictional which still fascinate us today. The woodlands have set the scene for many a fairy tale, and often the typical Germanic house can look like as though straight out of a Brothers Grimm book.
As a visitor to Germany, but with a personal connection, landscapes can feel familiar and unknown all at once, and it is now images from German landscapes that have taken focus as I explore the contradictions between reality and imagination, of home and of strange lands.
To read more on The Lonely Wolf, please click here.
The starting point for many of my works are stories, both fictional and reality. The poem titled Fable by WW2 poet Janos Pilinszky has played a central role in my work. Pilinszky wrote a stark but haunting portrayal of a lonely wolf as a refugee, and many of my paintings are imagined landscapes I envisage the wolf travelling through, trying to find somewhere called home. In these works, I seek to reflect both the dreams of the wolf and a tragic ending that lay unknown before him.
More recently my work has been considering similar stories from my own family, tales of life as a refugee post WW2 in Germany and Holland, with stories of ‘home’ being transient and something searched for. Germany’s culture is laden with folklore; the landscapes are steeped with dark tales both real and fictional which still fascinate us today. The woodlands have set the scene for many a fairy tale, and often the typical Germanic house can look like as though straight out of a Brothers Grimm book.
As a visitor to Germany, but with a personal connection, landscapes can feel familiar and unknown all at once, and it is now images from German landscapes that have taken focus as I explore the contradictions between reality and imagination, of home and of strange lands.
To read more on The Lonely Wolf, please click here.