Everything starts in sketchbook.

Everything starts in a sketchbook. Published by Unseensketchbooks in 2020.146 pages,100mm wide x 152 mm high, Lay flat book with taped spine, Screen printed cover.

Everything starts in a sketchbook. I feel that some of the best things I produce happen in a sketchbook. It is a sacred and personal space, like a journal or diary. I figure things out in sketchbooks. I plan things, I learn things; it is a safe place to fail. I carry a sketchbook with me all the time, and usually have several on the go. Different sizes, different paper, different sketchbooks for different trips.

A painting is a lot like a song or a poem, but played out in a multitude of ways, reflecting and depending on the person reading it. I used to include a lot more text in my work, I was really into list-making and word association, idioms and jokes, but I started to feel the work was too reliant on people’s understanding of the written language, and wanted my work to be read by people of all languages, and children. I am trying to speak in a universal language, about universal themes.

The golden thread is the human experience. Without dictating a specific meaning, I want people to recognise themselves and planet Earth in the work. I consider all visual art to be a cosmic space, a cosmos, a world of its own. I invite you to explore and get lost in that world. There is a deliberate chaos, which aims to mimic the kind of chaos you experience everyday when walking down a street, or through a forest, or the thoughts that stack up in your own mind. All of my works are failed attempts to organise this chaos. I am rarely still, and the world around me is moving at a fast pace. This energy and flux fuels my work aesthetically and conceptually. I work very fast, but over a long period of time, cross pollinating ideas and working on several pieces at the same time, until the work feels complete and whole. I think in layers and moments rather than a finished picture. I want things to overlap and collide. I want to discover something and to be surprised.