How did I get here?
I grew up as an only child with two artist parents. Even though I was always good at art, I ended up going to Hull University to do European Studies because I was quite good at languages too. I fancied the year living abroad but as it turned out I dropped out of the course before I got chance. I’m not academic in the slightest and the course bored and depressed me.
I went on the Enterprise Allowance Scheme (you have to be a certain age to remember that!) and I was painting fabric and making it into cushion covers. At some point I moved to Hebden Bridge and started a foundation course at Rochdale Art College, but I dropped out of that too. I did learn how to do machine embroidery there though and that’s what I ended up doing for the next 14 years.
Eventually I grew frustrated with sewing and thought I’d like to do print. However that required space and equipment that wasn’t available to me, so I bought a small graphics tablet and taught myself digital drawing. I wanted to make illustrated greeting cards, printed ones, so I remortgaged my house to pay for a print run. I was using popular designs that I’d sold as textiles, so it wasn’t an untested market.
So that was me as an independent greeting card publisher for the next 10 years, doing the trade shows and all that. Then I started thinking ‘what the hell am I doing? I’m sitting here working at a computer, and I want to get my hands dirty!’ I’ve always enjoyed painting and have done bits over the years, but I think some kind of mental fuckery to do with my dad having been a painter got in the way of me doing it properly.
Anyway I did start painting for real, I phased out the greeting cards, this was around 2018. It took me a quite while to find out how I wanted to paint and what I wanted to paint (well, that journey is never over). So here I am in my third creative incarnation, I’m pretty certain that painting will be it from now on, though I’d love to do some ceramics too.
What makes me tick?
If I think about what connects all my work over the past 35 years, I’d have to say that it’s my use of colour. I’ve always loved colour. As a kid I used to wonder why the railings on the local railway station platform were painted grey when they could’ve been red. I saw photos of Hundertwasser House in Vienna, and thought ‘why can’t all buildings look like that?’ (If you don’t know his stuff, look it up. Amazing!)
So yes, that still stands. I get such a kick out of colour, putting weird colours together, making them dance with each other, show each other off. The other thing that I get a kick out of in my work is being hands-on and practical - which is why I think it’s a bit weird that I spent 10 years working on a computer (see ‘How I Got Here’!) Anyway I’m not about to launch into a whole analysis of that. Suffice to say painting is where it’s at for me now.
Paint is so versatile, so visceral. I love getting my hands in it, getting it on my clothes, making a mess - it’s a license to be a kid again! I have a deep love of process and am always trying out new ways to make marks and create interesting surfaces in my paintings. I get bored easily, I have to keep moving forward, but certain elements always return, unbidden - like using text, that’s something that began in my textile days and I’m working with it again now. I paint in acrylics, and I use all sorts of other things along with the paint - crayons, oil sticks, collage, image transfer, ink, spray paint….I use brushes, fingers, hands, screwdrivers, sandpaper, scratch awls, dead biros….
Since I began painting in earnest a few years ago, I’ve moved from abstract to semi-abstract landscapes and back to abstract again and finally, towards the end of 2023, figures began to resurface in my work (my work was figure-based for many years). Figures fulfil a need for narrative (or provide a framework to hang a narrative on) which was missing in my abstract and landscape work. It all boils down to a long-held and deep interest in psychology and the inner life. That’s what really makes me tick.