The abundance of colour, line and texture around me here in the Cornish landscape provide inspiration for my work. 

Changing seasons, wild spaces of Bodmin Moor, hidden corners where nature thrives, the experience and knowledge of a place explored and revisited -  the seasonal growth, harvest, decay and renewal.

From the first marks on the canvas, applying paint, adding layers, following a line throught the compostion - my work  is a process of searching and questioning, the mark-making and the interplay of form and gesture. Sometimes scraping through the paint to reveal previous colours and marks, allowing for the unexpected and for those unplanned outcomes – leading to a visual expression  of my place, concerns, and our time in this life - the painting will have emerged as an entity that I no longer need to explain, or add to or subtract from.

Experiences of being in and part of this landscape are important for me  – the rugged hills, granite boulders and the tors of Bodmin Moor; footpaths, fields, streams and woodland, trees and hedgerows of the Lynher Valley. The painting will eventually find its own direction which may be from initial sketches and exploratory drawings, the choice of colours and materials, sometimes adding organic material, often layers that may be smudged or scraped through, but always retaining the knowledge and sense of place, so the painting becomes a distillation of these thoughts and experiences.

Living in this beautiful corner of Cornwall, close to Bodmin Moor, I walk every day through fields from the studio or along footpaths and out on the moor. I need that connection with the landscape and natural environment. I see the farming seasons and  the changing the landscapes; I pick up litter discarded in hedgerows, I count the decreasing numbers of butterflies, and watch for the  swallows in April arriving to nest in the garage - there was one year with no swallows  sharing our garage but amazingly a pair have found their way here again.

I often take photographs - if I'm carrying my phone -  catching images and glimpses of possible routes to a painting, as visual reminders of a moment, an experience, the drama of a season. Then it’s back in the studio where I start to bring those thoughts together.