Tell us about your creative process, what drives your practice?

My practice is quite varied as I work across photography, printmaking and installation. The development of my practice somewhat blurs the lines of traditional printmaking and engages in more rudimentary techniques with the intention of making work that is still highly detailed and refined. The aesthetic is achieved by using accessible materials and processes as well as hand drawing and painting into the works. Drawing is pivotal to my practice and often I will begin with more representational forms which are then broken down into the underlying visual and conceptual elements. Teasing out the underlying connections, patterns and forms is very much part of the creative process. The relationship between the transcendent and the mundane; the uncanny depths that lie behind the unassuming face of the familiar and quotidian is an overarching theme in my work with particular interest in the complexities of the feminine experience. 

You have quite a diverse and cross disciplinary practice, yet manage to maintain a consistent overall aesthetic within your works. How do you find the transition between printmaking and photography, and what inspired you to combine the mediums?

Combining the mediums came about more or less instinctually and I am happy to hear it translates as a consistent aesthetic. I came from a design and photography background and photography wove its way back into my work rather organically. There is something quite alchemical about both processes too. This is what drew me to printmaking. Printing my first plate felt like developing my first photographic image in the darkroom. There is a certain amount of surrender required in that you rely on another process or series of processes which combine to transmute the seperate element’s of paper, plate, press into the final work, the result of which can often be a surprise. My photographic work is often more representational and gives me the opportunity to engage with place and subject. Printmaking on the other hand allows for a prolonged intimate engagement often resulting in more abstracted anatomical and structural forms. The two mediums are perhaps like the flesh and the bones of my practice, an ongoing exploration to what is seen and unseen. 

In your works you examine womanhood without employing the traditional archetypes of feminist art. Tell us about your use of abstraction when exploring ‘the feminine’ and female experience. 

Aspects of my print work are often directly, although not always intentionally nor exclusively, suggestive of female anatomy. I am interested in the intersection of masculine and feminine traits as well as the anthropomorphic motifs and myths which appear in the work. I derive a lot of inspiration from nature and am interested in the underlying polarities and patterns, both in nature and within our human nature. This is mirrored in some way through the act of mark-making and certain visual symbols start to form through the prism of my own experience. Repeat motifs evoke a sense of rhythm and the paradoxical discomfort of creation. This evocation of the almost violent yet glorious nature of that which is being birthed contrasted with the inevitability of death and decay. Motherhood, navigating certain thresholds and experiences as well as the opportunities I have had to attend women giving birth have certainly informed my visual language. The works are deeply personal yet most often approached through a mythic lens and in that sense are not overtly autobiographical. 

Are there any female printmakers | artists that influence you?

I keep coming back to the deeply intimate works of Kiki Smith and Louise Bourgois who are a constant inspiration. There are many writers that influence my work including Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés and John O’Donohue. I am currently reading The Fairytales of Hermann Hesse and Wake Siren by Nina Mac Laughlin whose writing challenges the limiting portrayal of women through the re-imaging of Ovid’s Metamorphoses told through the eyes of the female protagonists. A few artists who I am also currently following are printmakers, Valerie Hammond and Lauren Drescher and Painter, Maja Ruznic. 

Finally, what exciting projects are you working on at the moment?

As a mother it has been a period of relative patience through this lockdown in terms of engaging in my art practice. The majority of my work was also cancelled like so many and things are just starting to settle down and come back into some sort of rhythm. I am looking forward to getting back into the studio and to teaching again and am also craving the opportunity to write, research and reflect on my practice in general! I would really like to do a residency in the near future to really carve out this space for myself and my practice. There are a few threads percolating for new bodies of work, one of which will further explore, through a mythic lens, our patriarchal culture and issues of entitlement and the pervasive violence against women and the natural world.