Mar 2008

Oil, enamel, spray paint, felt, bubble wrap, varnish and smarties on canvas

Mar 2008

Oil, enamel, carpet underlay, fake fur, collage, spray pain, gloss, marker pen and varnish on canvas

March 2008
Oil, enamel, spray paint, varnish, wool and marker pen on canvas

The creature on the left hand side of this painting reminds me of a Nudibranch which is related to the sea slug. A Nudibranch is a member of one suborder of soft-bodied, shell-less marine opisthobranch gastropod molluscs.
The organism on the right is more like a flying fish crossed between some kind of arachnid - the family of animals which the spider belongs to with its strange eyes. This winged creature is connected to the coral formation above, like a hovering humming bird drinking nectar from a flower.
I believe I am making paintings that illustrate a world with the same chemical elements of our own, but somewhere else entirely– so completely different structures and animals are produced. This is due to the chaotic factors coming into play, which work at the same time as natural selection.

Jan 2008

Oil, enamel, spray paint, collage, marker pen and googley eyes on canvas

Elements in ‘Lucky’ represent the way man structures the world and mixes the unnatural with the natural. The drawings illustrate the diagrams in reference books, which attempt to order and classify animals and plants mixing with the more natural forms creeping in from the sides, like trees within an urban landscape. There are collaged eyes stuck on, which although highly artificial, look like eggs or frog’s spawn. I did this picture just after my own pet (an axolotl) had laid eggs. They are perfect spheres which are pure white covered in jelly, and there were hundreds decorating the whole tank.

Feb 2008

Oil, enamel, spray paint, felt, googley eyes, feathers and marker pen on canvas

Named after the Art Garfunkel song from the film, ‘Watership Down’. As a child, the scene, which I found most scary, was where ‘Captain Holly’ escapes the destruction of their warren to tell the others how it was ripped apart by man, and the blood of the rabbits was carved up with the fields. The red parallel lines reflect this dark memory…
Experimenting with different mediums I have used stand oil, glazes and glue to give parts of this piece an impasto/plastic surface.

Feb 2008

Oil, enamel, spray paint, marker pen, pasta shells and collage on canvas

Aptly named, because I found it so difficult to know when this painting was complete.
I see cells, which are artificially coloured by human staining techniques, to illustrate their different parts.
They are surrounded by some sort of substance; maybe like the jelly that surrounds eggs or the cytoplasm that encases the nucleus of a cell.
This is definitely an inner world, a living factory although its purpose is unclear. That’s what is so fascinating about the universe – you can stare at structures under a microscope or even just look at natural wonders in our everyday world, and without in depth scientific knowledge, have no idea how they were created and how they function. But they all have a very definite purpose combining to perform complex processes.
I have used collaged food – pasta shells and mung beans, to stick onto the surface of this picture –which create natural form and surface.

Sept 2007

Oil, enamel, spray paint and marker pen on canvas

Reminiscent of the classic Anita muscaria, or commonly known as the fly agaric or fly Amanita, it is a poisonous and psychoactive basidiomycete fungus, one of many in the genus Amanita. This mushroom or rather the quintessential toadstool, it is a large imposing white-gilled, white-spotted, usually deep red mushroom, one of the most recognizable and widely encountered in popular culture. Though it is generally considered poisonous, Amanita muscaria is otherwise famed for its hallucinogenic properties with its main psychoactive constituent being the compound muscimol. The mushroom has had a religious significance in Siberian culture and possibly also in ancient Indian and Scandinavian cultures.

Here is has been genetically crossed with a green melon. Beware, this is what happens.

May 2007
Oil, gloss, spray, marker pen, fake grass and enamel on canvas

Tacky gold hybrid forms play out against a candyfloss pink background. They chime an artificial ring but keep the look of organic matter. A sun or star appears in their midst and they are memorised - how can this entity produce it own light and stand alone without wanting to bind and entwine with it’s neighbour like us?
Are these developing beings all at different stages in their evolutionary process? Are they never to reach the end- the perfect form – which is that which they see overhead and strive to be like?

Aug 2007
Oil, gloss, spray paint, marker pen, varnish and enamel on canvas

The colours look the same as the ones you find when oil has leaked out from a car onto the road in the rain. The coral waves crash across the setting with the central alien/robot figure on the look out. A seascape riding on a pink volcano.

Feb 2007
Oil, marker pen, spray paint and enamel on canvas.

Firstly I took a mixture of fairy liquid, water and white spirit shook them violently and then dropped them onto the canvas, which lay on the floor. This provided a textured ground to start. I have often found myself using either a white or black painted surface, in which both never fail to push me towards a slightly different or completely new technique, maybe because there are more options without an initial starting colour. In this painting I have not worked the body of the formations much at all, letting them keep their original quality of line which gives the a certain delicacy but not without structure. There is nothing, which directly resembles anything we may have seen in nature but insects and botanical shapes spring to mind whilst looking at their sprawling designs.

Jan 2008

Oil, spray paint, feathers, enamel and marker pen on canvas

I wanted to experiment using fluorescent paint as starting ground. In this piece I felt I really expanded my use of mixed media, using a variety of things purchased from a haberdashery shop. I have used a lot of collage in the past often of drawings that I have worked on, on the computer, but here I have used completely different substances like feathers and plastic goggley eyes. I don’t see any limit to the materials that I can use in my paintings and I hope to come across new mediums all through my art career.
Highlight is definitely an underwater scene for me, showing soft corals or sponges releasing their plankton maybe and mixing with what is in the rest of the ocean. The pink painted shapes look like jellyfish/octopus which is why some of the form have been left transparent in places.

Feb 2008

Oil, enamel, spray paint, marker pen, acetate and felt on canvas

A flying insect rising from the fluoro fire

Nov 2007
Oil, enamel and spray paint on canvas

Down at the bottoms of oceans, there are forests of corals where sharks and cephalopods lay their eggs. There are delicate sponges that welcome crustaceans and though the description sounds much like the one for the Great Barrier Reef, none of the species involved here are found in any of the warm waters of the tropical seas.

April 2007
Oil, enamel, marker pen, gloss, spray paint and varnish on canvas

Rather than go on about the painting, I will tell you about the Portuguese Man O’War which is what I see in this picture:

The Portuguese Man O' War (Physalia physalis), also known as the bluebubble or bluebottle, is commonly thought of as a jellyfish but is actually a siphonophore—a colony of specialized polyps and medusoids.
It has an air bladder, known as the pneumatophore or sail, that allows it to float on the surface of the ocean. To escape a surface attack, the pneumatophore can be deflated allowing the Man O' War to briefly submerge.
Below the main body dangle long tentacles, sometimes reaching ten meters (30 feet) in length below the surface, although one meter (three feet) is the average. They sting and kill small sea creatures such as crayfish using poison-filled nematocysts then draw the prey in to the gastrozooids, another type of polyp that surrounds and digest it.

Aug 2007
Oil, enamel, spray paint, marker pen, plastic ladybird and collage on canvas

This painting was a commission for one of my best friends. I was told by her to paint something with ladybirds in my mind. I painted and collaged them as well as sticking plastic replicas on the surface of the canvas.

There are so many varieties of ladybird but the Harlequin Ladybird, which came to Britain in the summer 2004, may jeopardise many of these. They are very effective aphid predators and have a wider food range and habitat than most other aphid predators (such as the 7-spot ladybird) and so easily out-compete them.

When hungry, harlequin ladybirds will even bite humans in their search for something edible!!

Oct 2006
Enamel, varnish and marker pen on canvas

May 2007
Oil,enamel, spray paint and varnish on canvas

It’s strange how things turn out isn’t it. When you think that all is lost and everything is dark, suddenly something comes from out of the blue to show you all is not lost and there is another way. And so it continues. This is very much the story of this painting. I began applying paint in a conventional method, using brush to canvas and created certain lines and shapes. After a while I got bored with it’s flatness and decided to start to spray paint over some of the surface hiding some of the original shapes. Not happy with this effect I began dropping enamel and using more spray paint over the surface until all I had was a tangled mess. I then gave up, and left the piece on my studio floor for some months. I could barely look at it sat there, so after a while I turned it around to face the wall, and forgot about it. About a year later I found the piece and began work again. Somehow each element that I added now to the painting seemed to lift it from it’s depressed state. Forms started to take shape and come to life and the outlines became clear.
I’m not going to go on about what I see in this piece – that’s up to you. I’m realising that it’s about the process for me.

Sometimes you just need to take a fresh look at it all.

Mar 2007
Oil, enamel, gloss, spray paint, marker pen and collage on canvas

A Garden of alien periscopes look out across the grassy plains whilst the golden/pink hills roll in the background to finish the Technicolor rainbow.

Some of the red entities were collaged aswell as painted. When I look at the ones of the more pinkie colour to the left I can’t help but think of my trip to Spain. Whilst there I went to a supermarket and here, in the meat fridges they had whole skinned rabbits, vacuum packed, and these look like the heads.

Jan 2006
Oil, enamel and spray on canvas

'Tonsil Mucus' began with a green spray painted background onto which marker pen was used to sketch out the forms. A variety of different paints and techniques were then overlaid on the artwork. In this painting I felt the need to break free from the more graphic pieces I had been making previously that were done in a more fixed style, makin more room for a immediate expressive quality. The canvas is filled with life and movement displaying an entangled web of organic plant and animal matter. The red form towards the top right looks like a pair of upside down tonsils while a daisy like flower blooms from below. Further down there lies a green ball of what could be frog spawn jelly or a group of cells multipling.

Oil, enamel, gloss and spray paint on canvas

'No. 2' could be a cross section of the human body showing the functioning organs beneath our skin. The large form to the right reminds me of an oversized kidney while the smaller one on the top left isn't unlike a separate brain. Each of the red and fleshy formations seem to be interconnected, processing a fluid within. They each appear to shine artificially like oversized balloons about to burst open. Within the forms there are what looks like eyes; maybe the formations are living entities while at the same time functioning together becoming something much larger. The green forms add a botanical element acting like stems upon which the organs are growing, or rather blossoming. All of this is surrounded by a sea of blue which was the starting ground for the work.

Jan 2006
Spray, oil and enamel on canvas

I see the forms in 'Raybrain' to be floating, weightless, as if they are in water. Even the green plant like formation at the bottom doesn't appear to be rooted to anything. The red, white and pink tones at the top of the work look like a liquid substance which will slowly dissolve into the blue. I see the 'Star' and 'Ray Brain' as living entities which are able to move freely about on their own inside the blue. They seem alien to our own world, but who knows what else there is to discover in the depths of our oceans. Our own molecular makeup is very similar to every other life form on earth but each life form appears uniquely different from the next. Due to the random characteristics of the evolutionary process other worlds with the same building blocks as our own world would have completely different creatures inhabiting it. Maybe like the ones in this painting!

Nov 2006
Oil, enamel, spray paint, varnish and marker pen on canvas

A sickly sweet architecture of curved forms is embellished with yellow jewels, which stand against a rich purple background. Layers of varnish and paint shine and drip down the canvas. Elaborate cartoon and graffiti references contrast with fluid painterly gestures which make up this strange vision.

June 2006
Gloss, enamel and spray paint on canvas

Not a nice title, but I think it was the fault of that unmistakable yellow in this painting that gave it it's name. This piece was created by dropping small trails of gloss black paint onto a wet pink coloured gloss surface. The two similar forms to the right of the painting look slightly phallic- which was quite accidental I can assure you! The bigger more delicate form towards the top left of the picture reminds me of the structure and pattern found on an insect’s wing. Together the different forms that make up this piece look like another world beyond what we can see with our naked eyes, maybe a microscopic one. The forms do seem to be connected somehow, working together towards some common goal, which we will never truly understand.

Nov 2006
Oil, enamel, spray paint and marker on canvas

A tribute to an amazing artist who I happened to come across whilst wandering the abyss of the internet.
His name is Serge Tretiakov and he creates a world which has been described as 'part child’s play, a part life work of a man compelled to communicate something profound.…..who created images that may be a greeting for those who already know, a map for those wondering - momentarily lost.... and a reminder of the universe's infinite wonder...'

Oct 2006
Oil, enamel, spray paint and marker on canvas

A tangled web of artificial coloured organic matter sprawls across view. The palette colours of Neapolitan ice-cream are actioned against a silver backdrop. Meaty/fleshy structures dominate below and erupt with life and spray. The pink shines sweetly and connects in an upwards trail complementing it's yellow neighbour.
Gravity doesn't appear to have much of a hold here, but the yellow forms appear deep-rooted in space. Other looser structures surround them, creating impressions of forms once present or those that are yet to grow.

April 2007
Spray paint, enamel and collage on canvas

Everything was thrown at this picture to begin – varnish, paint, white spirit and then spray paint done into its wet surface. It creates something which we imagine happening in a far off galaxy -with spattering of light intensities and activities. Could they be far off planets or the ruminants of stars, or just patterned kaleidoscope of colour and forms, which resemble liquorish, centred candy. I don’t think we can ever get to the heart of it and it is this constant mixing, breaking down of boundaries and cross over in which we can always question the real nature of things. It’s differences between them that we cling to, when in fact they all share certain similarities and characteristics and all is not what it seems.

Feb 2006
Oil, enamel, gloss, spray paint and marker pen on canvas.

The process of making this painting began with a marker pen sketch following the addition of a thinned oil painted green base. The green was added while the canvas was upright so that the thin paint dripped to create a liney effect. Later the flesh, brown, pink and yellow tones were added.

The main large fleshy form could be described as a deformed body with what looks like a horse's leg and hoof growing from the top. Within this form there is a circular hole with a cross between a brain and intestines inside.
The organic green and brown colours remind me of earthworms crawling in the grass.

March 2006
Oil, enamel, gloss and spray paint on canvas

'Afterbirth' demonstrates the thin line that can separate the grotesque with the beautiful. It illustrates the gory placenta and fetal membranes that are expelled from the uterus after a baby is born. The placenta is the body's only disposable organ and is usually thought of as a lifeless mass of blood and goo outside of the body. Here it is shown as a live and functioning structure projecting outwards in all directions with ornamental and botanical qualities.

Dec 2006

Oil, spray paint, marker pen and varnish on canvas.

A busy skyway which can only end in a disaster. A collision of strange crafts split up into a bouquet of hearty clubs that create puffs of smoke, which then dissolve into the clouds.

April 2006
Oil, enamel, nail varnish and marker pen on hard board.

Unlike most of my paintings, this one was done on board instead of canvas. The board was not primed at all before I painted it, so the paint absorbed well into the surface giving a more stained effect. It started with an initial sketch done with a marker pen, which allowed me to be very expressive, and fluid with the marks I made. It's sometimes more difficult to be as spontaneous with paint as it is for me to be with drawing and I enjoy the freedom which it allows me. After sketching the outline it was a case of filling in patches of colour which I made from a mixture of oil, enamel and even some purple nail varnish!

July 2005
Oil and enamel on canvas

The central organ is a rich red against a royal blue background whose colours and form may represent the blood and the arteries within us. Continuous curved lines flow across the formations like ruffled fabric. Small dark cracks are visable within the red which could also represent smaller capillaries. The nucleus or core of the organ seems to converse with the long pink structure which could be the main artery which connects to the muscular heart. Altogether almost too ornamental to be organic.

June 2006
Enamel, spray paint and marker pen on canvas

'Pink Sky' was a very quick and spontaneous painting to produce. The background was made using lines of spray paint with pink gloss paint set against it. The pink looks to me like trails across the sky. You can see the white surface of the canvas coming through the thinner parts of the spray paint, which appears like clouds. Blue gloss paint was dropped from above onto the pink where it mixes and marbles erupting upwards. A white spray paint finished this effect and splashed darker marine blue connects the muddled blobs. Whilst this painting reminds me of all things skyward it also brings memories of the different platform like structures found in early computer games. Often something I aim to achieve in my works is this strange mix of the artificial with the more natural forms.

June 2006
Oil, enamel, gloss and spray paint on canvas

This picture is a multitude of painted textures. Using gloss paint as a base I began to work on the surface whilst the paint was still wet. I dropped a couple of blobs of pink gloss onto it which mixed and melted into the background. After the base was dry I created a contrasting painted layer using a matt black paint. Here I made a kind of wood grain pattern which I then surrounded by a gloss grass green coloured paint. The painting began to take shape and appear as if set in space with strange liquid green forms running through it. White spray paint added to this spacey feel.

May 2006
Oil, enamel, spray paint and marker pen on canvas

I absolutely love the colours, which make up this painting because I think that pink goes so well with the silver spray painted background. The painting was created very simply by dropping gloss paint onto a dry spray painted surface. This kind of painting involves alot of chance due to the way the dropped paint takes it's place and what shape it forms. It can make or brake a painting, and sometimes something unexpected can happen which can teach you something new and point you in a slightly different direction. It's a bit like a mutated gene that gives some kind of advantage, so it therefore survives beyond the rest and is replicated. and used again.

Sept 2005
Oil and enamel on canvas

At first I used marker pen to sketch out the forms and then painted in the dark backgroung colour. Next came the flesh tones painted in oils and finally a thinned down enamel paint was used for the lighter blue and thinned oil for the white areas. Twisted morphing bones appear here all on the same plain, suspended in the abyss. They are shattering, while at the same time moulding together. Artificial outlines with organic colours and form. It reminds me how completely different elements in nature can form very similar looking patterns and structures.

April 2006
Oil, enamel and spray paint on canvas

This one was named due to the third part of the triptich looking quite like a medical drawing of the eye ball. The colored part of the eye is called the iris. It controls light levels inside the eye similar to the aperture on a camera. Its color comes from microscopic pigment cells called melanin. The color, texture, and patterns of each person's iris are as unique as a fingerprint.

March 2006
Gloss, oil, enamel and spray paint on canvas

The pink sperm like formations appear to be swimming in a liquid gloss medium with scattered irredescent bursts of light. The surface has been built up with layers of gloss and spray paint with enamel dripped and poured. There is great contrast between the different textures and playful reaction of different paints which explode with life and light.

Oct 2006
Oil, enamel, spray paint and marker on canvas

Two towering bio-morphic forms face each other ready to do battle. They scowl and stare whilst tied by a single umbilical cord connected by their chins. Each has a backbone acting as a solid stem and base, rooting them firmly into the green mounds on which they stand. They display their crested blossoms in a bid to out do each other using differing techniques but with the same aim.

Naturalistic and abstract forms are present with both harmonies and clashes of colour. They are fleshy and botanical, grotesque yet cartoonesque. A hybrid world filled with paradoxes and confusion.

March 2006
Oil, enamel and spray paint on canvas.

A place where the field meets and talks to the sky. Blossoming clouds form on the horizon with decorated jewels of emerald. The crops reach up to touch the light of the magic puff balls. A pink haze is forming from below making the shephards happy.

March 2005
Oil, enamel and marker pen on canvas.

This artwork has great comedy value to me. I used to get called either 'chicken legs' or 'lucky legs' (lucky they don't snap) at school due to my skinny pins. I hated it at the time, but laugh about it now, and pity this squawking, chicken like formation!

Aug 2005
Oil and enamel on canvas

Clouds of shining gold poo! A strange key carved in the rock with an all seeing eye.
Whilst I was painting ‘ET’ I had been looking at a book called ‘Planet Earth’ which contains photos of our planet taken from satellites in space. I used the same earthy orange/brown and sea blue colours on my picture as in these photographs. Orange and brown are colours, which go together so well. Nature never fails to provide me with these amazing colour combinations and balance.

Aug 2005
Oil on canvas

This painting is made up of extremely bright, bold and mostly primary colours that I associate with a rainbow. The form which contains these colours is far from the perfect curve of a rainbow and twists like a tangled parachute or strange caterpillar. It's fascinating how a rainbow is made, starting off as white light with no colour until it passes through a substance like water and refraction occurs. Refraction is possible because each colour has a different wavelength and therefore bends at a different rate. Colours have the ability to effect our mood and create emotional responses when they are really just a play of light.

July 2005
Oil and enamel on canvas

A dismembered insect or flower against a colour like the inside of a daisy.
I adore the way the background sets of f ‘Dissected Butterfly’ with its differing tones and movement. The light blue forms really stand out, and look as if they are suspended parts of a deceased butterfly. The varied sections seem animated; each seeming to have some definite purpose, which is connects them somehow. We see here a small snapshot of a continuing process which could be found in the microscopic universe. This could be found inside a cell when it is splitting apart and replicating it’s self.

June 2005
Oil and enamel on canvas

Decorative swirls and curves make up an organ like structure with bright coloured balloons. Bold outlines make cartoon and graffiti references.
The flowing style of this piece reminds me of the Art Nouveau period, which originated in the late 1880’s. It was based on the sinuous curves of plant and animal forms used primarily in architectural detailing and the applied arts. This was not only a protest against the sterile realism of the time, but against the whole drift towards indus