My early practice engaged in a dialogue with natural phenomena. Of particular interest was how a few hidden patterns in nature produce a diversity of form.

This body of work looked at the way fractals are a way of visualizing chaotic behaviors, the work was an exploration of the nature of complexity. I was drawn to the organic, to plant forms because nature has a very simple and effective method for building complicated structures from simple parts using recursion – manifesting in endless instances of pattern, symmetry and geometry.

When I was working with more tradition forms of printmaking, lithography, etching or serigraphy, the process, i.e. the iterative quality central to the printing process, informed a lot of the work. This led me to explore the idea of iteration and repetition in different disciplines, math’s, physics, biology, music etc. Line played a very significant role, both as a unifying element and as the tool for constructing form, there is a mediation between the mathematical and the organic.

Complexity cannot be truly comprehended without a conviction of its underlying simplicity.  Order and chaos are often thought to be polar opposites, yet a new form of chaos may be explored that is not just something in the middle, a splitting of the difference, it may be a third pole.

projects

CHIMERA | drawing on archival prints| 2008-09

ARCHETYPES | drawing on archival prints | 2007

OUTSIDE IN | mixed media on glass| 2004

HYBRID | drawing on archival pints | 2006

LOVE-IN-THE-MIST | offset lithograph | 2005

ITERATION| offset lithographs | 2005

THICKET | serigraphs on paper and fabric | 2004

FOLIAGE | solar etchings | 2004

BREED | colour pencil, acrylic and pencil on paper |2009

THE SINGING GARDEN & OTHER FABLES | offset lithographs | 2004

Thicket | serigraphy | handmade rice paper and fabric | 170 x 35 inches | 2004

Thicket (detail)| serigraphy | handmade rice paper and fabric | 170 x 35 inches | 2004

Thicket (detail)| serigraphy | handmade rice paper and fabric |  2004

Thicket (variation) | installtion view at the Winchseter school of art, UK | 2004

Resonance | offset lithographs | 30 x 40 inches | 2004

Resonance (variation) | offset lithograph | 30 x 40 inches | 2004

The Singing Garden| offset lithographs | 30 x 40 inches | 2004

‘Chimera’ takes forward the ideas explored in the ‘Archetypes‘ series. Flesh, plant, machine, animal, organic and inorganic come together to fashion a hybrid with even more obscure antecedents. The result is somewhat unclassifiable, a category unto itself. Something tugs at your subconscious but you can’t quite put your finger on it. It
isn’t quite plant, it isn’t animal, it isn’t quite human, not exactly machine, but something else entirely; something of all those, but none of them. In the scientific realm, as the rate of genetic modification accelerates and organisms are modified with plant, animal and human genes, the boundary of form and function blurs and these strange chimeras
become more a possibility of what could be.

Chimera-II | colour penciI, archival pigment print | 44 x 102 inches | 2008

 Chimera-I | colour penciI, archival pigment print | 44 x 102 inches | 2008

Untitled | colour penciI, archival pigment print | 60 x 75 inches | 2009

 Hybrid – I | colour pencil on archival pigment print | 30 x 44 inches | 2007

Hybrid – II | colour pencil on archival pigment print | 44 x 44 inches | 2007

Iteration is series of offset lithographs produced during a residency at the Curwen Childford Print Studio in Cambridge in 2004.