Memphis flick , 2024

The main purpose of my practice over the last couple of years has been the idea of drawing, as an expression of responsive and semi conscious creating should be given more solidity and greater weight than that of lines on a page. Although the drawings in themselves are very important to me, I couldn’t exist without drawing…I needed them to be…bigger!

This is what brought me to making my woodcuts; wall mounted sculptures of cut wood which are then hand painted to replicate exactly the drawings from which they are derived. 

In this form the lines and the colours are tangible, they have weight and they have a relationship with light and shadow that a drawing on paper cannot have. 

At the same time I had also been thinking about what the next step might be and how the realisation of the physical form of a drawing into a woodcut could develop into something with even more physical presence. A free standing object that can actually be walked around, can cast more shadows, can be hit by light from many angles.

As I continued to play around with this idea it seemed that the work would manifest itself in the shapes and lines of the human form but as time went on I was developing a growing ideology that art doesn’t have to be in a museum in order to have beauty and importance.   Can it not also be something for the home, something familiar that can also be beautiful.  Can the things we use every day be art? 

Something that has taken time and care to make and is more than the sum of its parts. Something that sparks in us thoughts, feelings and ideas.

From this the Memphis flick was born… it was the combination of these two trains of thought that brought the idea of making a lamp into my mind. The form and solidity, the lines and the shapes and colours are a creation of how I see the world which combined with the functionality of a lamp makes an object of usable design that can be in the home and combine both pleasure and usefulness

art for the home, designed for the museum