Artist Statement:
I admire the human capacity for experiencing love, hope and joy even under very challenging circumstances and I tend to focus my work on these three themes. I paint dreamy, lyrical abstract paintings which are heavily influenced by the emotional content of my work as a psychotherapist.
People’s internal worlds have always intrigued me which drove me to re-train as a counsellor/psychotherapist in my early 40s. Having originally studied literature, I was interested in looking at different forms of expression – beyond language – for several years. The exploration of internal landscapes and emotional processes carried over for me in my practice as a mixed media, abstract artist. The world of therapy opened up a deeper exploration of instinctive and deeply personal processes that painting helped me to access. Concurrently, producing art became my own form of therapy. In my therapeutic work I discuss emotional states; in my art I aim to translate emotions into abstract, poetic, visual markers on canvas.
Art enables me to access my own embodied emotions that often escape intellectualisation. Painting is bottom-up processing rather than top down. I can discharge my emotions through the work on canvas or paper. Primary emotions such as sadness, terror or disappointment are often masked as secondary emotions, i.e. emotional reactions that we have in response to the primary feelings. Often the secondary emotion such as anger masks the underlying feelings that we experience originally. The process of painting often helps me to access these primary emotions thus having more understanding and choice in dealing with these hidden feelings.
In my recent series of work ‘Love Unbound’, I explore emotional responses to the theme of love: passion, joy, loss, wounding, desire, hope and romance. Love, arguably is one of the central themes of what it means to be human; most of our concerns are related to being loved, wanting to be loved or not having been loved enough. Art gives flesh to the experience of loving; in my art I attempt to capture the lyrical, soulful and painful aspects of this complex emotion.
Exhibitions:
2026
Tarpey Gallery, Derby, Open 2025, 27 June - 9 August
Gallery at Home, Abergavenny, Summer Exhibition, 19 July -15 August 2026
Tarpey Gallery, Derby, Surface & Form -- Selected Artists, 29th August - 4th October 2026
2025
Linden Hall Studio, Deal, Winter Show, 6 December – 31 January 2026
Artsnug Gallery, WalthamstowStories #3|In Colour, 1-31 November 2025
Tarpey Gallery, Derby, Open 2025, 30 August – 6 October 2025
Tarpey Gallery, Derby, Refresh 25 – Selected Artists, February-April 2025
2024
Nearly Home, Digital Art Show Madrid, October 2024
Art Gotham, New York City, Sept – November 2024
Hamptons Fine Art Fair, USA, July 2024
Tarpey Gallery, Derby, Open 25, Group Show, July/August 2024
Inky Finger Gallery, ‘Fiesta’ Group show, July 2024
Tarpey Gallery, Derby, Refresh 24 – Selected Artists, February/March 2024
GSA Capital, London, February – July 2024
2023
The Other Art Fair, Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, March 2023
Potter Clarkson LLP, Nottingham, March – May 2023
Dugdale Centre, Enfield, April 2023
Arbeit Studios, Palmers Green, April 2023
London Lighthouse Gallery, London City Island, May 2023
Tarpey Gallery, Derby, July/August 2023
The Gallery Green and Stone, Fulham, August 2023
Arbeit Studios, Palmers Green, August 2023 (Solo Show)
Mundipharma, Cambridge – August – October 2023
Artsdepot, Finchley, December 2023- February 2024
Artistic Influences:
I am strongly influenced by abstract expressionism, in particular in my use of colour fields, gestural mark-making and in the emotional content of my art work. I am in particularly enamoured with the free flowing brushstrokes and dynamism of Joan Mitchell .
I admire the lyrical work of Frank Bowling and his use of colour.
A seminal influence has also been the later, abstract work of Gerhard Richter, whose Cage Paintings influence my work in terms of layering and subsequent scratches and indentations.
A contemporary painter whose work I hold in high esteem is Conn Ryder. Conn's use of space, light and lines is phenomenal. Her work has influenced my abstract florals.
