Translating from various media, photography, film and tv, I make drawings using charcoal and soft pastel often increasing the size dramatically.

In the stitched works, I stitch pages of literature, novels, plays, newspaper such as the FT and sheet music together to create a surface to draw on.

The process of stitching holds a personal significance for me, stitching signifies, mending., patching, grafting and healing, connecting the disconnected, the needles I use are sometimes included in my work and left to hang lose on the threads that are holding the paper together, reminding the viewer of the process the drawing as undergone.

The hard shine of the manufactured steel of the needle contrasts with the soft organic paper and threads that form the surface of the drawing, they are a tool and a possible source of pain.

The stitching interrupts and disrupts the surface of the drawing and text while informing the work with its own structure as it holds and connects the pages together.

The printed pages are bot concealed and revealed by the process of drawing.In the exposed sentences, passages, words, of the authors, the glimpses of revealed text are an invitation to rekindle a desire in the viewer to seek out the author and read or return to read again, so a journey of discovery begins.Finding inspiration from the works of photographers both past and present, from Atget through to Winogrand including the contemporary photographer Tokihiro Sato.
I often revisit images, working in series, Tokihiro Sato has been kind enough to give me permission to work form his photographs, his magical lit woodland photographs were taken in the ancient Japanese beech forests in northern Japan, Shirakami-Sanchi, a Uniseco World Heritage site.
Drawing has been my primary way of working for many years now, there is something elemental about charcoal, it is one of the least processed of tools to draw with, when I am holding a stick of charcoal, I am connected to the material that I am making a mark with, I also use soft pastel sticks with their rich array of pigments, differing textures, sometimes combining both charcoal and pastel in the same drawing.
My intention is to shine a light on the original while creating something new of my own.