Artist Statement

I am a mixed media artist & illustrator, based on the south coast of the UK where I live with my four year old son, Bodhi. In 2016 I completed a foundation diploma in Art & Design at UCA, before going on to study Fine Art at AUB and graduating in 2019. Shortly after graduation my life took an unexpected turn when I discovered I was pregnant. Little did I know back then, that what I would experience over the next few years would be so fundamental in shaping who I am now as a woman and an artist.

A few months into my son’s life I became a full time solo parent, and my experience of raising my son alone has run almost in parallel to my mum’s experience of raising me. History repeating, if you like. Determined to understand and break the emerging generational patterns, I embarked on a journey of self discovery that has simultaneously become the centerpiece of my artistic practice. Through my work I have found comfort in the centuries worth of women and mothers who walked before me, who unknowingly held my hand within their personal stories, and whose voices still echo within the chamber of our collective maternal experiences.

Bloomsbury artist Dora Carrington, though not a mother, has influenced my practice greatly. I relate to and am inspired by her unique and unpinnable approach to both life and art, refusing to ever fit herself neatly into a box simply for the sake of making sense to the outside world. Contemporary emerging artist Shannon Vaught has been another influence over my practice, as well as Alfie Simms. Both have inspired me to be less literal in my technical approach, and instead to work more experimentally with shape, light, and colour, whilst letting the image form itself as a result. Lastly I will mention Alice Neel. Undoubtedly her expressive style has left a lasting impression on me, but it is her encounters with maternal grief and separation, and her work around the portrayal of motherhood that has deeply resonated with me. Neel, much like myself, rejects the notion of the idealized mother that we see in the likes of Mary Magdalene - her work at times, an obvious critique - ‘Degenerate Madonna’.

My current work explores themes of motherhood, grief, and absent parents. Born initially out of a desire to make sense of my own experiences, but now sitting within an ever expanding context of how motherhood and maternal experiences have been, and are still, portrayed within art and society as a whole.

I am interested in the role of the man in influencing how a woman is shaped or viewed, through fathers - or lack of - as well as through relationships, and how this has dictated the way in which women have been portrayed and objectified over the last few centuries, both by and for the male gaze.