ARTIST'S STATEMENT

Keeper of the dream

I seek to create a visual impression of the human emotions and memories that lay concealed below the surface exterior of everyday life in an effort to address the very humanness that ultimately binds and connects us to a world of shared experience. In order to express my ideas, my work takes the form of layered surfaces, using wax and plaster to seal and submerge text and imagery.

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Handmade papers form the base of many of my pieces. Ephemeral themes are hand stitched words emerging from the surfaces, expressing emotions, themes and dream-like ideas. My work seeks to convey a calm quality, hence the use of muted colours. Wax, as with the lead sometimes used in my work, carries ideas of preservation, whilst thread and stitch suggest continuity.

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The initial impulse for much of my earlier work was prompted by personal memory and experience, and is reflective of my English, Chinese/Malaysian parentage and themes relating to identity.

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As my work has progressed and developed I have begun to focus more closely on human emotions. Contemporary society appears to be motivated by surface realities, consequentially we have lost touch with important issues that affect us all personally and deeply and the more the modern world allows us to communicate with each other electronically, rather than face to face, the more isolated we become from one another.

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I cast my papers without the use of a deckle in order to retain a fragmentary appearance to the finished work, which I associate with the fragmentary nature of life.

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Much of my recent assemblage art was influenced by the domestic alters still found in parts of rural Mexico today.

Fragments of letters, religious items, discarded toys and vintage wedding cake decorations. These once treasured items, housed within boxes, wire crosses and print trays are a representation of life, love, memory and loss.

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