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Writing and drawing are the same.

A line leaks out of the body. Something escapes human containment. 

It's not abject though. It might be like faecal matter but for me all that makes me human is not abject, and the body is not only a stinking heap of shit or rotting sack of meat. 

Whatever seeps out may be different each time. 

It may be shit, or blood, or fear or love, envy, energy, saliva or pscyhe. 

All of these are the same, somehow held together in fragility for just a brief moment in time.

Sometimes it feels like a fight to keep it together.

It is whole but flows free. 

I am an interdisciplinary drawing artist, writer, illustrator and curator. My training mostly went down the fine art route because I liked doing my own thing, and wanted to tell my own stories. Yet I was lucky enough to be interested in two technical disciplines throughout my education that proved to be useful for jobs.
 
In the mid 1990's I spent 2 years of a BTEC life casting, which helped me to work in character design and prosthetic makeup in film and TV for quite a time, preceded by many important years selling lipstick and shampoo. Then many years later I started printing, and have only just worked out what those two things have in common. Having taught printmaking for a number of years, I spent much time trying to escape paper entrapment. This is currently working out okay.

I work on my own independent projects, as well as public and community arts commisions.  I studied at Central Saint Martins, Wimbledon School of Art and did a traineeship with the London Print Studio. My masters degree is in drawing, I have a diploma in digital illustration and am a qualified educator. Currently BA Illustration online course leader and a supervisor on MA Illustration at Falmouth University. 

For over 10 years  my research always came back to economic sustainability, and it is something I still care about and sometimes write about.  The creative industries are so important to society, from processing seismic events, to providing a moral compass to finding ways to live outside of a basic animalistic level of survival, to inventing solutions to problems to surviving the human condition, to enhancing clinical treatment of what ails us. In order to do all of that, we need a healthy industry that people from all backgrounds can afford to enter and stay in.  

Yet for over 30 years, despite other pressing concerns, I have always returned to the body and I have come to realise that for me maintaining a connection with this is the only path to true authenticity in making my work. So this is the main area of formal and academic research I am most likely to be found engaging in. 

You can get my books from Pudding Press Ltd . Occasional treats can be found in my shop here. For news of exhibitions and other projects, as well as an open sketchbook please follow me on Instagram. Join the mailing list on this site if you want quarterly updates. Send me an email if you would like any more information. 

 

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