I am a visual artist based in Edinburgh, Scotland. I make paintings and collage, often in the landscape, and use video to document and discover new ideas. Each piece of work is individual but also part of an unfolding process. Painting is a means to think, to feel, to remember, to analyze. My work often starts with a story but that is not necessarily where it ends.
I develop my outdoor improvisations in the studio and use found objects and images as prompts to remember stories, associations, and visual qualities that become paintings. The implied narratives of figuration vie with abstraction as I look for new crossovers of subject and materials. Sometimes this develops into larger installations. Whether working in the studio or in the landscape I try to find what is meant to surface.
I grew up an identical twin in Cleveland, Ohio, USA, and lived in Vermont, Pennsylvania, California and New York City before coming to Scotland in 1990. I left urban life in Brooklyn for a cottage in Glenisla, Pethshire, then a sheep farm in Angus before settling in Fountainbridge in Edinburgh in 1996.
For many people who migrate, ‘identity’, ‘place’, ‘home’ are shifting, transitory. My work draws on my experience of displacement to look at the beauty and danger of nostalgia and the unreliability of memory.
I am a member of:
Scottish Artist’s Union
Studio 1.1, London
Scottish Society of Artists
Visual Arts Scotland
Scottish Contemporary Art Network,
