My practice currently focuses on exploring the visceral experience of being embodied in the world.  I use the idea of the ‘body as vessel’ as a language to express emotion and feeling states that speak to a broader, collective experience. 

I begin by making a costume in response to a particular experience or feeling state. This is the catalyst for a dialogue to open between the internal and external self.  The costume is an integration of these two aspects of embodiment and physically represents something without form – bringing the internal to the intergral space of otherness with the ‘outside’. 

Next, I ‘dress up’ in the costume and film performances of myself, privately, within a domestic space.  This further brings the physicality and embodiment within and of the body into the realm of the seen and the relatable.  I then use these films as source material for my 2D work. 

At present, I am working with a number of themes.  These include:-

• exploring the impact of neuro-diversity and mental health challenges on personal life experiences, and using the body as a vessel to express this through physical language, gesture and expression;

• exploration of the female vs non-binary body in ways that challenge gender associations; and

• consideration of the domestic and how this impacts the experience of the internal/external body.

The final stage in my process is to paint in response to my film stills in an attempt to find ways of communicating different levels of the experience on the body.  This inevitably becomes expanded beyond the source material and the work then evolves through my communication with the paint, the physical language of the performance and the abstract experience of the internal content of the work.  My 2D work is often quite varied, moving from completely abstract to figurative and back again.  It is always my intention to seek out a language to express this hidden, inner world and pursue new ways to express and understand that which is experienced and then embodied externally.