Previously, in my last year of college and my first year of Uni, my work involved themes on colour and texture.
I experimented with making detailed and intricate shapes and patterns with the medium. This worked particularly well with ink on wet paper. The ink would spread and bleed out making tiny shapes and lines.
Ink only produced flat images, but I felt a need to build more texture. I started using more mediums in with the paint and ink, like gels, pastes, and my favourites which were crackle paste and glass bead gel. Both enhanced the inks ability to travel through tiny spaces, creating visually pleasing results.
Further on in my degree I moved on to looking at nature, this was inspired by a photography lesson, where we went into town armed with a camera, but rather than taking photos of obvious surroundings, I was more interested in the cameras Macro function, which allowed me to take close up shots, bringing to light all these beautiful unnoticed textures of nature.
This idea also became present in my paintings, instead of works just of colour and texture, they now had a deeper meaning, involving personal ideas and feelings towards our natural surroundings, drawing attention to the unnoticed beauty of our world.
I work with a range of mediums, many of my paintings can contain 3 – 5 different substances. I mainly use acrylic paint and ink, but also gels and pastes, grounded up pastel (therefore a powder), watercolour, glitter, water, paper circles from hole punches and generally anything I have around me that I think will build up a fascinating texture.
My work is a constant experiment and I love being surprised by my paintings.
