Flower Painting / The Wall Painting

Born in Birkenhead in 1974. I am a painter, studying for a PhD at the Royal College of Art. Since graduation, from Liverpool, I have worked predominantly in oils on a small scale. I am interested in exploring (via memory) the boundaries that are perceived to exist between abstraction and figuration, the nature of 'loaded' iconography (of the everyday and the Romantic) and aesthetic questions posed by the physicality of material artworks. I currently work as an associate lecturer for Leeds College of Art and Design, and as a workshop leader for The Lowry. I co-founded Hydra Arts in 2006. I have a particular enthusiasm for the paintings of Maurice Utrillo, Caspar David Friedrich, Samuel Palmer, John Constable, Pieter Bruegel and Jan Van Eyck. Also, for a range of cinema that includes the films of Stanley Kubrick, Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy and Errol Flynn, and for the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein.