My Grandad has always been an oil painter during my life, he would even stretch and prime his canvases along with making frames with scrap timber. When I go to visit him his place always smells like oil paint and he is always working on a painting. As a child, I would occasionally stand next to him as he painted the landscapes he loves. I would ask him from time to time if he could teach me but he would always say " When you're older... " I think this must have been the start of my encouragement to make art. He still hasn't given me that lesson but I think I've learnt enough by watching him.

Other than watching my Grandad paint I was always the kid who was hidden away with a pen and paper, cutting things with zigzag scissors or making something. I was fortunate to have a family that believed in the power of creativity and would occasionally enroll me in small art classes in the school holidays which I truly cherish to this day. I remember attending an insect casting workshop, beading classes and I found a lot of creativity in dance throughout my life.

I have a multidisciplinary practice mostly but In the past few years I have been primarily working with printmaking and photography. My materials tend to be informed by my interest in textile and sculpture which is usually present in my work. I tend to arrive with specific mediums because they clearly illustrate the images in my head. In the past year I have worked with a photographic print process called cyanotype. Using photographic and printmaking techniques to create a cyan print. Commonly used by engineers, builders, and architects to form a blueprint for plan-making. The process marries photographic and printmaking practices which have always been of interest to me and also result in a print with unique differences and details. As you cover your paper/material with the chemical cyanotype mixture you let it dry and then expose your chosen image stencil by using a light exposure. This has always been so fascinating to me because of its similarities to photographic film and using a camera. In some ways I saw this process as cameraless photo taking.

My concepts start with going through my visual journals and building on ideas that could be in the form of a drawing, written paragraph, or mind map. I usually work project to project so planning is pretty imperative to my practice. Forming a feasible plan and list of materials is usually one of my first steps. Second, this is working on drafts and testing my materials. With my photographic prints I tend to sift through photographic material ( I like the challenge of finding old photographs like family/childhood photographs, or found material sitting in strange folders in old hard drives that I forgot I have taken ) or I'll set out to photograph a new series of images. This space of image collecting and curating can always transform my work which can be exciting. I then go through and edit and play with my photographic material and set the files up to be processed. Because of my background in screen printing, Photopolymer printing, and cyanotypes I got in the habit of using halftones and specific file setups to expose stencils for the print, I tend to continue playing with these layers even with my digitally printed photographs. Then I will print and start creating the final work.

My work is very personal, subtle, and aims to be gentle. It’s quiet and hopefully giving.

I find myself greatly inspired by sculpture and performance. I enjoy dance and movement along with the spontaneity and experience of performance. I enjoy sculpture usually because of its power of speaking a narrative, placing you in a very specific place in time. Some artists who I look up to are Erwin Wurm, Kate Newby, Sriwhana Spong, Yvonne Rainer.

I enjoy my series of cyanotype works included in my last show called “ In Being Of Unbelonging “ at Penny Sage Studios. That series of work took me about 6-8 months of planning, thinking, and making. I learnt a lot about my practice during the making process which has helped me arrive at a really interesting place in the practice.