Statement
These drawings, paintings and sculptures explore my responses to, and engagements with the printed text of specific pieces of literature and music.
Much has been written on how meaning is not just a question of sound in music or text in the book but that meanings are embodied, seen and expressed in objects such as scores, performances and performers, listeners and viewers. However, the role played by the spaces in which these activities unfold is seldom examined or considered to the same degree.
The manner in which the meanings of printed texts can be determined or modified by their reading or performance within differing architectural environments or spaces is of particular interest to me. I work towards artworks which convey the moment or moments when a text, a performance and an environment come together in ink, paint or clay to become a visual metaphor for the experience of reading a text or hearing a piece of music.
I aim to convey the complex tensions within the totality of a reading or listening experience by drawing on the manner in which I believe meanings are embodied within my work and attempt to make these accessible to the viewer. By drawing attention to what many consider to be an implicate or hidden order of an artwork, I invite the viewer to look more closely for meanings within my work rather than immediately going to external references triggered by it.
The viewer will see that my artworks are created by the application or removal of overlapping transparent or opaque marks, surfaces or forms to create multilayered objects. In some, my strategies or improvisations suggest or identify meanings employing complex representations and relationships between objects and spaces. In others, disparate visual elements, including texts, layered and folded towards or away from the viewer, are employed. The tensions between these frontiers of meanings, I believe, have much in common with the manner in which printed texts in literature and music can be constructed, as well as read.