Drawing is my passion, my drawings are translations and variation is key to my practice.

Working in series, I draw with soft pastel and charcoal exploring diversity of subject, media and medium.

I translate from photographs, tv and film stills, for my current series I am translating from small Botanical illustrations from the 1600s – 1800s. These were small intimate drawings or paintings, skilfully crafted by botanists, often in albums, I find translating these small images into large scale drawings, increasing the size dramatically an exciting and challenging process.

I often return to work from the same image, each time I revisit an image, there will be shifts and changes, sometimes, subtle, sometimes radical, in a similar way to how music changes when played repeatedly.

Variation is important to the way I draw, whether I feel the image calls for a more expressionistic approach or as with the botanicals a more restrained manner. In future series I will be including acrylic and oil paintings.

My series of lit woodlands are translated from the photographs of Tokihiro Sato who is s a renowned Japanese photographer who has kindly given me permission to work form his photographs. Tokihiro’s woodland photographs were taken in the ancient Japanese beech forests in northern Japan, Shirakami-Sanchi, a Uniseco World Heritage site.

There is something elemental about charcoal, it is one of the least processed of tools to draw with and I love the way when I am holding a stick of charcoal that I feel so connected with the material that I am making a mark with., and then in contrast I use soft pastel with its rich pigments and its vast array of colours, sometimes combining both in the same drawing.

My artworks are translations, I attempt to capture something from the original while imparting something new of my own.

“The Task of the Translator” is an attempt to … to shine upon the original all the more fully” (Walter Benjamin, “The Task” 260).