Art, Making & Research
- Where Ideas Take Form -
Developing my art practice has helped me make sense of the world in ways I struggled to articulate when I was younger. I was always drawn to the poetic, seeing beyond the simple object or act in front of me but I didn’t yet have the vocabulary to make that real. My technical mindset set me apart, but it also constrained me. Early in my career I could only define things logically, but as my understanding of myself, others, and the world deepened, so did my way of making. Over time, I’ve created an approach that balances joy with rigour.
A process drawing that began with a rope and formed over four rounds of making.
Drawn to the Beyond
A touchpoint in how I see the world has always been a simple idea I return to repeatedly: my interests and research focus on what lies beyond what is presented. The sense of “beyond” is wonderfully expansive, a place of learning, questioning, and meeting other ways of seeing. Through this lens, I notice underlying rhythms and repeating forms before I focus on the subject itself. The human, the geological, and the cosmic echo one another in ways that, without context, could belong to any scale.
I often think back to one of the first creative courses I took: an introduction to visual thinking. At first, I felt overwhelmed, but something eventually clicked. In a session exploring opposites, my classmates worked with light and dark or front and reverse. I went further outwards and inwards, sketching how an atom and a solar system mirror each other, each held together by a core that shapes everything around it.
I’m always aware of how small gestures can echo larger patterns, how the microscopic and the cosmic often mirror each other. That moment revealed how differently I approached the world. Over time I came to understand how different my way of seeing was, and how deeply it has woven itself into my practice.
My work is primarily abstract, as this creates space for people to engage on their own terms - to be drawn into the colour or the forms that can evoke everything from smoke to mountains.
Engaging the Creative and the Technical
As my artistic grounding developed, I found myself stepping more confidently into the space where creativity meets the technical. I would begin with an idea and then work out how to make it real, often by avoiding the expected route. Some of my most meaningful creative discoveries have emerged from this way of working.
The Petri Latex series speaks to this. My partner once gave me a box of random materials with no expectation of how I might use them. Inside was liquid latex - a material that shifts from opaque to translucent in thin layers as it dries. It became the perfect vehicle for colour, creating surfaces that echo stained glass. The first challenge was finding a vessel that could hold these delicate layers.
Nothing I tried offered the grounding or clarity the work needed. Then, in a moment of recognition, I returned to science and to an everyday object designed for examining the microscopic: the petri dish.
I’m particularly drawn to materials that can “break” pigment - using acetone or spray starch to force reactions that reveal new behaviours in the material. These experiments aren’t just technical exercises; they help me explore the patterns, cycles, and thresholds that run through my wider practice.
Embedded in Iterative Process
Much of my making is a form of inquiry — a way of testing ideas, observing behaviours, and learning through the material itself. Iterative processes wind through all my work. The results are never static; there is always something to move toward - a sense of repetition, directionality, and potential. Sometimes I don’t yet know what that direction is, but I can feel it in the way materials and movement begin to speak to each other.
This iterative quality mirrors my fascination with plate tectonics: each plate shifting a little every year, always moving forward, their interactions shaping the next iteration. Over millennia, immense change unfolds - change that can’t be witnessed in human time, yet is always happening.
This approach runs through each series I create. Open experimentation gradually narrows into clearer parameters. My practice often sits between control and freedom. I set rules that help me see progression and create space for exploration. These rules form a framework, something I can hold while still allowing room for the unexpected.
In the Petri Latex series, the dish becomes the control: a hard edge that contains the material while allowing fluid dynamics within a closed system to move, settle, and shift.
Engaging with People
My art practice rests firmly with people; making work in isolation would never hold my excitement. I thrive on hearing how others make sense of the world and how they read the work.
More than once, someone has seen something in a piece that I didn’t see myself. Their interpretation invites me to look again - to see the grouping of lines and colours through their eyes, to understand how it resonates for them. This interplay inspires me to keep creating, to keep having conversations, and to keep pushing what my materials can do.
Holding Space for Discovery
My practice continues to evolve through this interplay of curiosity, experimentation, and conversation. Each piece becomes a small act of discovery, a way of learning through the material, through the process, and through the people who encounter the work. Art, making, and research are inseparable for me; together they form a way of understanding the world and my place within it. What emerges is never fixed. It shifts, responds, and grows, shaped by the rhythms I notice, the questions I ask, and the connections that unfold along the way.