about the artwork

My art practice includes sculpture, installation and works on paper. The work tends towards reductive abstraction. Precise geometries and alignments are constructed, or cast, using everyday materials such as wood, plaster, cardboard. Often I explore the interaction of sculptural form and light, selecting materials which reflect and absorb light to generate optical dialogues between light and darkness.

The artwork is closely linked to my practice of zazen (sitting meditation). I am drawn repeatedly to twilight and the turning seasons, using these transitions of nature to explore themes of stillness, expansive awareness, and the nature of change itself. My installations have an experiential focus and aim to alter everyday awareness, by inviting a viewer to slow down, for instance. The alchemical aspect of art intrigues me; manipulating DIY materials to transform states of mind, such as boredom, into bright contemplation.

A recurrent theme in my work is location. I have always had an acute awareness of my bodily position and orientation in space. My sculptural forms and alignments are sometimes derived from specific geometries such as the tilt of Earth’s axis or angles of latitude – these elements function both as visual metaphors and also locate the work to a specific place.

Recently I produced a series of wall sculptures which were cast using jesmonite resin. These contemplative reliefs based on squares, circles and basic symmetries are intended as formal studies to be developed further. The fluidity of this medium allows me to experiment with colour saturations by adding pigments directly to resin.

My art influences span the Neolithic stone alignments of the Scottish Highlands where I grew up, to the glass and steel towers of my current home in Manchester. My interest in Eastern philosophy is interwoven with a continuing exploration of the concepts and reductive idioms of minimal art and geometric abstraction. To me it seems that sculpture has more relevance than ever amidst the overwhelm and distraction of our fast-paced contemporary world, providing a touchstone to concrete realities perhaps.