My artistic process is deeply influenced by my surroundings; rather than being defined by a particular medium, many of my projects are linked by the platform of re-construction: A concept that draws from all the available resources around us, re-positioned, and very much inspired by the buildings and people living on the islands in the Seto Inland Sea, Japan, where I have also lived. This understanding of the need to form arrangements in relation to what can be freely obtained underscores my practice. This approach is incorporated as a form of inventive improvisation which presents change as a permanent state arising from the chaotic and fragmentary nature of the everyday. These inquiries have led me to explore my own origins and to collaborate with family and friends in a very personal form of research that results in a constant process of learning: About materials, landscape, people, and myself.
Through sculpture, painting, drawing, installation, and photography I reveal a close and constant engagement with the material world, immersing myself in the ongoing re-construction and transformation of personal and collective identities. Using a wide range of collected objects, my approach challenges the traditional conceptions of art making; while often combined with paintings and drawings which are marked by a keen depiction of repetition and a strong sense of elapsed time —instilled in me from my early training as a house painter, landscaper and gold digger.
This act of engaging with reality, as real and defined, presents certain possibilities – the problem and the solution, cause and effect, an understanding of the forces of light and dark, constant change. Subsequently, these pieces are contemplative arrangements (of islands; islands within islands) that reflect on human life and consider the Japanese notion of ‘mono no aware’ or ‘the pathos of things’. I am reflecting on our own individual condition while salvaging, reshaping, reconstructing and revealing the poetic encounter.
