Pilgrim trails, ritual walks;
voyages in, an interior path;
imagined geographies, memory maps.
A place within a landscape corresponds to a place within the heart.
I am trying to dig down into painting about place, in an empathetic attentiveness, to invent a way of recalling on canvas with paint. I am not letting go of the naming, the immersion in the place, and the memory work. I am interested in a way in which what has been going on in deep time and in human history and is continuing to go on, in growth and weather and sheer physicality, in a place, can begin to be suggested, felt, responded to.
I as the viewer am changed; something has stuck, something’s going on … a listening gaze, open to the steady yet returning stare.
How, in painting, the mark, however made, can be a way of returning these named and unnameable things. How drawing becomes mark-making, and the materiality of the paint – its layering, its colour, its malleability – becomes a response to an encounter with a dynamic entity.
Born Norfolk 1950
Dip Ad 3D Design Bath Academy of Art, Corsham 1969-72
MFA Newcastle Polytechnic 1989-91
Own business in textile design and fashion from 1972 until 2016, designing two collections a year and taking them to New York, Tokyo, and Paris, selling in high fashion speciality retailers in the US, Japan, Australia, Hong Kong, South Korea, London, and Europe.
Exhibitions
One Person
2017 David Simon Contemporary, Bath, UK
2015 David Simon Contemporary, Bath, UK
2015 Oz Zingaro, Tokyo, Japan
2015 Pragmata Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
2015 Bircham gallery, Norfolk, UK
2012 Hilton Gallery , Bath, UK
2011 Bircham gallery, Norfolk, UK
2010 Stour Gallery, Worcestershire, UK
2009 Beaux Arts gallery, Bath, UK
2009 Lund Gallery, Yorkshire, UK
2009 Bircham gallery, Norfolk, UK
2008 Beaux Arts gallery, Bath, UK
2007 Le Bain gallery, Tokyo, Japan
2007 Mediart gallery, Paris, France
2007 Bircham gallery, Norfolk, UK
1996 Cartwright Hall, Bradford (municipal gallery)
1996 Hartlepool Art Gallery (municipal gallery)
1996 Wall drawing installation for A. A. H. conference at University of Northumbria
1996 Visual Arts UK festival, Newcastle upon Tyne
1995 Middlesborough Art Gallery (municipal gallery)
Group
2022 REVERB, Visual Arts Scotland Open exhibition, UK
2021 Re:Connect, Society of Scottish Artists, UK
2020 Pastures Green, David Simon Contemporary, Castle Cary, Somerset, UK
2019 Rough Stuff; In Praise of Wild Surface, Cavin-Morris, New York, USA
2018 Cley18 Contemporary Art, Norfolk, UK
2016 Earth Skin, Cavin-Morris, New York, USA
2014 Elementals; Women Sculpting Animism, Cavin-Morris New York, USA
2014 In Praise of the Numinous, Cavin-Morris New York, USA
2009 Salt of the Earth, Salthouse, Norfolk, UK
2009 Ambrosia, Cupola Gallery Sheffield, UK
1996 On the Corner exhibition, Sunderland, UK
1993 Finalist Arthur Andersen Art Award, London
1993 EAST international open exhibition, Norwich, UK
1993 Open Door exhibition, London
1993 Northern Seen exhibition, Sunderland, UK
Galleries continuing to show work
Stratford Gallery, Warwickshire, UK
Bircham Gallery, Norfolk, UK
Padstow Fine Art, Cornwall, UK
Bils and Rye, North Yorkshire, UK
David Simon Contemporary, Castle Cary, Somerset, UK
Pragmata Gallery Tokyo, Japan
Cavin-Morris, New York, USA
Private collections in UK, USA, France, United Arab Emirates, the Netherlands and Japan Museum collections, Pallant House, Chichester, E Sussex, UK
Publications
1992 Versus magazine, Leeds
1996 Catalogue for solo exhibition at Cartwright Hall, Bradford
Press
included in review in the Independent newspaper by Adrian Searle, of EAST international