Personal and Environmental work
Sculpture and woodcarving
Painting
Restoration
My personal work developed gradually out of my commissioned work. Having been trained to mimic nature and natural rhythms (graining, marbling, trompe l’oeil) and then historic stylizations of nature (period carving, sculpture & decoration), I began to see the potential to alter appearances slightly, producing a double-take reaction in the viewer.
As Picasso said “Art is not Truth. Art is a lie that makes us realise the truth”. My sculptures and paintings are little lies that make the viewer question, and if successful realise a different truth. They are questions rather than statements. Starting with natural forms (Eve/ Neptune/ Great Spirit) I graduated to juxtaposing old imagery (borrowed from past artefacts) with new (The Almighty Cheeseburger and Fries, St Jerome etc), often sourcing Christian iconography in order to highlight moral issues. The first series in this vein was born out of living in Cumbria during the foot & mouth outbreak of 2001. The 5 paintings from that time formed a series called “The countryside is open for business”. These are now featured as back and front cover and illustration to a book called “From Mayhem to Meaning – cultural metaphors of the foot and mouth outbreak, 2001”, and were intended to expose the false metaphors used by HM Govt. This was the consequence of free-market dogmas overruling common sense and compassion – a truly medieval scene, which was entirely man-made and could have been simply prevented by inoculation.
Since then other series have developed like “Mortgage a la mode”, loosely based around the national obsession with house ownership, as well as “The chronicles of St George”. Sculptures have developed alongside, but are not generally grouped into series. My three obsessions with Nature, the past and morality will continue to inspire work for years to come.