CARBON COPY OF MYSELF

Graphite is carbon - carbon is life

Born in Margate, Kent. Now residing and working as a professional artist in Notting Hill, London, since year 2000. I have worked on a variety of creative projects in my community facilitating art groups on a voluntary basis for many years.  My artistic expression has gone through many phases over the years resulting in a highly personal approach and perspective. Which juxtaposes autobiographical & social commentary imbued with Bi racial cultural references which reflect my heritage. Having been born to British & Guyanese parents. 

All of which are reoccurring topics & themes which I use as content I feel compelled to express with the thread of a voiceless solemnity & joy which my activist & empathic persona wants to scream, shout, attack, love, rescue, forgive and protect. 

Architectural like structures; Houses, Homes, Buildings, and the Body are the forms that I use as subject matter. Human skeletal frames, body parts and perfume bottles are motifs.

I strive to make analogies between the subject matter's content, in relation to the processes and methods I use to express esoteric beliefs. My main credo is that of the body being a Temple which houses the spirit: the true essence of one’s self is beingness and consciousness, rather than not doingness.

I produce painted drawings. And paintings that I draw on, or paintings on fabric that has been glued onto boards, which I glue drawings on paper onto, bringinging them into the foreground then making them blend into the background.

The texture of the threads in the fabric add depth, movement & atmosphere.

Smearing paint over the surface with my hands & fingers.

I rarely use a paintbrush, I use the opposite end to draw, etch, scratch & mark make, as well as regularly using my shoe print into thickly applied paint, to build up the texture or to distress a smooth surface to add the appearance of weight, depth and misused.

I use chalk pastels, oil pastels, oil & pigments, ink & water colours.

along with heavily applied Graphite a signature method I use to colour in, or over, covering large areas of surface space. 

The metallic surface catches the light reflecting and changing colour to shades of bronze or gold, and black, in shadow. Like alchemy. Graphite is carbon carbon is life.

There’s an Immediacy to my work.

slapdash scrawlings & scribbled doodles, are the starting points which have developed into scaffolding’s which structure & reveal or enclose hidden images. 

A process which helps me progress through key cognitive stages of understanding, analysis, application and reflection. 

Whilst mapping my mind’s wanderings as I contemplate future ventures, loved ones – or just daydreams, my attention elsewhere. 

Drawing idly, helps me in my struggles, dispelling pressure and tensions creatively.