Artist Statement

My painting is a visual journey back and forth between internal and external landscapes. I am drawn to the natural landscape - not the topographical elements, or ‘views’ in a moment of time, but rather the wider experience of belonging within that place. My artistic language and internal landscapes are derived from culturally borrowed decorative objects of my childhood in Hong Kong where Chinese antiques, Indonesian and Balinese lamps, as well as indigo dyed textiles formed the visual world that I grew up in.

I see the natural world through the lens of these objects, which are a memorialisation of belonging and loss; a type of visual archaeology where memories are embedded in layers of paint and intuitive mark making. I see these symbols of remembrance, personal ancestry and collective grief in my surroundings as expressions of my own internal and external landscapes. 

I work on canvas, wood and paper and handle my materials roughly and very physically, working in many thick and thin layers that are then scrubbed, sanded, scorched and scraped back to reveal an analogous history of the layers of time, experience and memories. I am interested currently in abstract, decorative forms alongside atmospheric elements of physical landscapes, creating imagery that refers simultaneously to antiquity and the contemporary.