My Process

As an Artist, I like to be unconstrained in both technique, subject or medium. Although I do mainly use oil paint, as it requires both skill and patience to really understand, execute and master. But then with mastery comes great joy in the creation of a work that really moves people, in an interaction with what I’ve created. I’m always awe struck when something I’ve created affects another person. Maybe it excites, interests or causes such a range of emotions that it takes on a life of its own. Then I have succeeded because if it achieves nothing of note, it is a waste of time.

Sometimes I like to paint something simple that gives pleasure just to be looked at or sometimes I like to create something with layers of meanings like an onion, or paint to make your eyes dance with the depths and rhythms of the paint. That is why, possessing the original canvas, is always best. Because the human eye can look into these depths. Like looking into the depths of water, when the camera can only photograph a flat surface.

One of the main bodies of work I am known for presently, is the Goddess collection. In this series I wanted to dissect the components of beauty - what and who is beautiful, what make them so? People have made themselves ill trying to conform to a physical stereotype put forward in the visual media that is impossible to obtain, thinking it will bring happiness.

The non attractive are pitied, the natural ageing process is to be prevented and not to have the body beautiful means you are of less worth than someone who is clearly unnaturally enhanced.

This can fear can cause destruction by comfort eating, extreme dieting, depression, plastic surgery etc. We measure each other with society's gaze. Governed by what is held up to us by our peers and instructed by the media which shows us examples of beauty, the manufactured images of film stars, pop stars, celebrities, fashion models, glamour models or whom we are told are beautiful.

To explore this idea, I use a picture of Marilyn Monroe, one of the most iconic and enduring images of the ideal of beauty put forward by the media. I wanted to decipher what it is that makes her so attractive, but unexpectly, through my research. I discovered, she was perhaps basing her own image on that of another screen legend Greta Garbo.

To prove this concept, I have overlaid Garbo's photograph over a particular image of Marilyn. The photograph I chose of Marilyn was edited by herself; where she rejected her own image, by drawing a large cross in red ink over her photograph. She destroyed the photograph to make it unusable, it is a gesture of dissatisfaction. She saw something that she didn’t like, to us its mistifying.

It is my belief that Marilyn sought to look like Garbo, held up to her as the ideal of beauty by the media of her day. Through her career you can see her face changing to become more and more like Garbo.

Each painting in the Goddess collection explores this idea, with the two images merging in and out of each other. Producing a different personality or view point.

It is a personal response, to which one you relate to most. But also woven in, is the stories of these two women, who had similar difficulties in life and made themselves a form of art work. They were the sculpture, using surgery, makeup and lighting to such an effect to become goddesses. Untouchable and to be worshipped. That is why I called this collection the goddess collection. Each one is numbered in order of its creation. Each one is a separate identity.