My paintings focus on coastal skies and the colours of early mornings, dusk and the silver light of a winter’s day. My studio is perched on a hill overlooking Falmouth harbour – it’s exposed to all the elements that the ever-changing Cornish weather brings.
At times it’s very atmospheric, seeing dramatic storms rolling in over the bay, and being surrounded by all this has had a significant influence on my work. Predominantly a painter of the coast I am constantly drawn to the horizon, where the sea meets sky or where sea meets land, and by the special qualities of light and elemental weather, particularly of the wild and beautiful Cornish coastline where I live.
In my painting I like ambiguity of spaces, the way planes appear and disappear, not really fully defined but suggested by a subtle detail or a gesture of the paint, this is at the heart of my practice. Reducing the landscape to subtle, minimal forms, I would like the viewer to see an abstracted essence of land and sea. My process is one of using multiple layers of oil glazes to achieve depth of light and colour, while using the palette knife for added texture and definition.
Painting for me is a contemplation of a place, frequently returning to the same location to paint. When painting, I think a lot about light. How light illuminates the water, the clouds and the land. I am drawn to the drama, the contrasts, the colour shifts that light creates. The shifting light that occurs in a single day from sunrise to sunset, from one day to the next, from one season to another. It is this fluctuating light, changing, multifaceted and full of illuminating colour that I see everyday, that is so inspirational to me. This is at the forefront of my work, what I hope to capture; the layers and emotion that light conjures within land, sky and sea.
I was born in Hong Kong and spent my childhood living by the sea in Hong Kong, Sri Lanka and Malaysia and this has had a huge influence in my life and work. I moved to Paris in 1990 where I studied at Parsons School of Design.
In 1997, I moved to Houston, Texas and studied Fine Art at The Glassell School of Arts, the teaching wing of The Museum of Fine Arts Houston and exhibited extensively in solo and selected group shows.
I moved to Cornwall in 2014 and gained a place on the Falmouth Art School’s. Intensives course and later went on to study at The Newlyn School of Art. Since returning to the UK I have exhibited extensively in solo and selected group exhibitions and my work is held in private collections both nationally and internationally in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, USA and Hong Kong.
I live near Falmouth and work from my studio at home overlooking Falmouth
harbour.
