I paint to understand the value of the wilderness.

I work from my own remembered experiences of the landscapes I have journeyed to, mostly around Scotland and the North. In the studio, I reconstruct the topographies of those places to tell again, the story of our wilder world.

Similar to stage-sets, my paintings act as a device: an invitation into a ‘tapsalteerie’ world, where one finds characters who are impervious to their environment, who reside in precarious places or walk across wobbly bridges above unsettled seas.

Often painted with a crepuscular palette, they feel like scenes in which something is about to happen, like the moments just before daytime transitions into night-time. They have the language of a dream one has just awoken from and so present themselves as the perfect space for both being there and not being there; inhabitable spaces that you cannot visit in real life.

The physicality of the paint I use, areas of impasto or cut-out-and-stuck-on materials, disrupt the illusion so that an area which should be sitting back in the painting is protruding out into the viewer’s space. The more formal elements of the painting’s edges against the wall, become a place to peer from, like looking out to sea the from the edge of a cliff. My paintings are a meeting place.

As well as their fairy-tale like allure, my works are rooted in reality. They are a way to bring two worlds together and to activate what is perhaps a misplaced familiarity and sensitivity to our natural world.