Kill Me Now: exclusive print release.
I am very happy to be releasing a new print with Kill Me Now gallery, ’Solar Powered Dream Machine’ is an A2 Giclée print, and is available at their gallery in Margate and on their website (link at the bottom of the page).
To celebrate the release, they asked me some questions about my work.
1. What’s something about your work that people completely misunderstand?
It’s hard to know what others understand, interpret or misinterpret. These days I care less about translating a specific meaning, I’m learning to enjoy and celebrate the confusion and multiple ways something can be read. I love how each person brings their own story and self to the work and it becomes theirs, like a board game you play with your own set of rules, or a song in a foreign language that still makes you want to dance. Not sure that answers your question… tbh idk. 🙂
2. Apart from this one, What’s the most ridiculous question someone has asked you about your art?
“Is it done with AI?”
3. What’s your creative guilty pleasure?
The internet.
4. When do you know a piece is finished (or do you ever)?
There’s a feeling when something is complete, you can’t add or take-away any more information… When it belongs to someone else it is really finished, if a piece comes back to the studio there is a chance I’ll paint over it, or cut it up and add it to other pieces. I enjoy fertilising my new work with old material, the studio is a endless digestive system of half started and half finished works that I like to think of as one big body of work, each ‘finished’ piece is just part of a bigger picture.
5. What completely non-art thing influences your work the most
Nature…The planet… The Universe.
Road signs…board games…medieval anatomy
6. Whats your favourite colour (today)
It will always be Blue… 🙂
Colours for me are like ingredients for cooking. I’m obsessed with the power of colour combinations, colours can vibrate next to each other and make paintings loud or quiet. “Colour is the place where the brain and the Universe meet”. Paul Klee.
“With colour one obtains an energy that seems to stem from witchcraft.” -Henri Matisse.
7. Whats your go to music when working
Music can dictate the energy of the room, my body and work… so it changes all the time depending on the piece I’m making, the mood of the day or the energy I’m trying to create. There are a few classic studio albums that I return to; Kind of blue by miles Davis, Paul simon by Paul simon, Solid Air by John Martyn. I make regular playlists and those become the soundtracks to a body of work or period of time. Music is like food for me and fuel for the work.
8. What’s a mistake that turned into a good piece of work
There are many. My approach to making art is very much process lead, I create problems to solve and welcome the unpredictable nature of paint, paper and canvas. I love that there’s no edit-undo in painting and drawing. I try not to design the works I make too much, meaning that I don’t want to know what they will look like in the end… I want to be surprised… I want to discover something. It’s taken a long time to free myself up to this way of making work, I used to be a lot more concerned with the completeness or ‘finish’ of something, now I often think/feel the best bits of a painting are the bits I didn’t do, whether it’s a drip or a scribble from my daughter, I am looking for incidental details that dance through the work like little flowers growing out of a brick wall, and those bits often happen by mistake. “Do not fear mistakes. There are none,” -Miles Davis.
9. What’s something in the world right now that’s creatively feeding your brain?
Some books I have read recently which will fill your brain with brilliant ideas:
Lanny by Max Porter. Swamp thing by Alan Moore. A field guide to getting lost by Rebecca Solnit. Land Sickness by Nikolaj Schultz. Elements by Stephen Ellcock.
10. What idea are you currently obsessed with?
I have an exhibition at the end of November at The Vanner Gallery in Salisbury. ‘Bodies of Land and Water’ is a show I have been working towards for a few years and I am very happy to bring it to life at the end of this year. The show runs 28th November – 23rd December 2026. https://www.vannergallery.com/
