Early work

I have always been drawn to land, and all that it is made of. I grew up on a farm where I made mucky stucky with my brother in the yard, while tractors dodged around us. I earned money in the summer holidays from the age of thirteen by walking through acres of wheat or barley pulling out the wild oats by hand.  The bottle dump we discovered in the middle of a field, remote and unseen for years, became the focus of endless treasure hunts, trying to piece together fragments of ceramics and taking home countless weirdly shaped bottles. In the backyard of the farm, we stocked an old clapped out Austin 1800 van full of our treasured finds filled with exotic looking coloured water. We would sit in the front seat and pretend to drive to all the places that we dreamed of going whilst lighting stalks of straw, imagining we were travelling on exciting adventures.

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With hindsight, I realise why I try to make work about uncovering things that have a story to tell and have layers of history. I like objects that appear to serve no purpose but look like they should and are made from materials that have a natural surface texture. I have been on the fringes of archaeology for years without really understanding why, but now with age, these things begin to become clearer and reveal why an early interest has become a lifetime of exploration. Marks created by man or animal that appear, or reappear when conditions alter are a part of the larger landscape that are entrenched in my subconscious. Observing the natural cycles has become an important element of how I see and react to changes and they continue to challenge how I can record and interpret them.