I am a visual artist based in Hampshire (UK) whose work provides pictorial windows into visually rich, expansive botanic worlds that I describe as ‘botaniscapes’. Responding to an historical artistic tradition of representing plants largely as aesthetic objects and planted gardens as a marvel of human control over nature, my studio practice explores how plants can be understood in terms of power, agency and ambiguity.
I use acrylic, oil and spray paint to represent the artificiality of how plants are subject to modes of organising, whether in botanic gardens, planted landscapes or as pressed specimens fixed on herbarium sheets. Adopting a stylized approach that heightens the unnaturalness of how plant life can be organized through human interventions into the plant kingdom, I mobilise concepts drawn from critical plant studies and philosophy to help me develop artwork that provokes questions about how we understand the relationship between plants and people. I have a recurring fascination with the visual confusion and frisson from observing diverse plant species alongside each other, in ways that are not replicated in the natural world. As such, elements of my studio practice explore the visual and emotional effects generated from unnatural plant arrangements.
Another focus in my artwork is undesirability and marginality in the plant kingdom. Engaging with plants understood as ‘weeds’ and ‘aliens’ has inspired me to represent them as noble plants worthy of pictorial representation in their own right, but whose occupation in a tradition canon of botanical art has often been marginal or omitted altogether. In some paintings I have positioned weeds centre stage, taking on a larger-than-life proportion and rendered using highly saturated colour palettes to give them visual luminosity. The viewer is invited to comprehend the limitations of our current perceptions of what counts as (un)desirable plant life. Emphasizing the active presence plants have in worlds humans have created, in paintings that re-visualize vegetal being, the viewer is propelled toward speculative futures that meditate on the connections between plants and humans.
Overall, my work collaborates with the viewer, encouraging them to see beyond the literal figurative references to plants and gardens they may already be familiar with.
My work is held in private collections around the world, and has been featured in publications including British Vogue, London Lifestyle, and London House magazines.
GALLERY REPRESENTATION
The Bowie Gallery, Totnes, Devon, UK www.thebowiegallery.co.uk
Abbeville Art, London, UK www.abbevilleart.com
LUMAS, 20 locations globally, for fine art limited edition prints of selected artworks www.lumas.com
ARTS EDUCATION
2019, MA Fine Art Painting (distinction), University of Arts London (Wimbledon)
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2022, ‘Ruin’, Way Out East Gallery, London, UK
2021, ‘Ruin’, Poola Gallery, Pula, Crotia
2021, Group Show, The Bowie Gallery, Totnes, UK
2021, ‘The Stuff’, The Bowie Gallery, Totnes, UK
2019, ‘Squeezed’, Nunnery Gallery, London, UK
ART FAIRS
2022, Battersea Affordable Art Fair, London, UK
2022, Fresh Art Fair, Cheltenham, UK
2021, Battersea Affordable Art Fair, London, UK
2021, Fresh Art Fair, Cheltenham, UK
WORK HELD IN PRIVATE COLLECTIONS
UK, USA, Denmark, Italy, France, Portugal