First Snow
Last Snow
New works on paper which I will call my trashy series combining collected and found objects and materials providing comment on our world, lives, predicaments and hopes - with some humour ... using mixed media, acrylic paint, washed up plastic, old watches, toys, iron filings and magnets and LED ticker tapes 70 x 100cm
I Was Here & There
Ammonite Death Assemblage
Who Will Save Us?
'First Snow' and 'Last Snow' is a diptych. In many cultures the first snow is a magical experience to be revelled in, for example in South Korea it provides blessings and good fortune for a relationship and is the height of romance as portrayed in Korean series. This image portrays a couple suspended in a magical snowfall using dolls,toy cars and modelled snow flakes with a battery operated LED ticker tape looping FIRST SNOW in green. Borne from binge watching too many of these series it celebrates our optimism and sentimentality in the face of nature. Its sister image is inspired by Simon Armitage's poem The Summit where he describes the snow line in retreat as a bedraggled hem of a bridal train. Here I have plastic artic animals trapped in a plastic acrylic mire and an embroidered and silicon patterned train in retreat . I suppose this shows our blindness and stupidity over time. This piece has a red ticker tape LED looping LAST SNOW.
'I Was Here & There' is divided by a coastline drawn in iron filings attracted by magnets, reminiscent of childhood Etch A Sketch this makes reference to magnetic North and the idea of location and having a place in the world. The left hand side of the image is based on Scarborough's South Bay in the UK. The right side of the image and transposed where North is at the bottom is also a coastline where I lived until very recently - Las Canteras beach, Las Palmas Gran Canaria. I was here and there - both places and in both cases the coastline and sea and creatures living in it were feeling pollution effects. Locations and country are marked with postage stamps and cameos. The assemblage is completed by a compass bottom centre and covered in glitter.
'Ammonite Death Assemblage' takes its title from an exhibit at The Rotunda Geological Museum in Scarborough and if it wasn't going to be a picture it would have to have been the name for a heavy metal band. Combining found bits of plastic, fake flowers, cars and dinosaurs, old watches and clay modelled ammonites and ice creams it is bordered on the left by a cloth measuring tape representing deep time. A cute T rex also a star model at the Rotunda overseas the death assemblage, reminding us how for a species so young we have wreaked an awful lot of damage.
'Who will Save Us' features a VR headset and detritus from the world around us and ponders if AI technology and/or other realities, fantasies, philosophies, religions will save us. Plastic toys, detritus and flowers are combined with acrylic paints and gold leaf.
Sick mermaid 1
Sick mermaid 2
Recurring
Recurring Hotel
Childhood
Trinity
Battle of Nipple Hill
Didn't See it Coming
Plastic Wave
Sea Stitching
Didn't See it ... again
Works on paper 31 x 42 cm mixed media including plastic figures and horses, spectacles, plastic from beaches, acrylic paint. These are working through ideas some of which will become larger pieces.