Artist Statement

My work frequently comments upon notions of identity, links to landscape and connections with place. The Scottish Highland landscape in which I was brought up is a constant source of inspiration for me. Landscape has always featured heavily as a part of my notion of self. There’s a certain sense of fidelity which I attach to this topography which is elemental.

My work is representative of this, yet sometimes not directly so. My practice questions how the landscapes, spaces and places which we inhabit form us and can be translated through personal engagement, privileging one’s own memory as a principal source. Through this I acknowledge that memories of landscape, recalled with clarity when first encountered, can over time shift to become completely obtuse and non-linear, they become part-remembered-part-imagined places. In particular, much of my most recent work has been evidence of my attempting to recall through visual means a fleeting sense of a specific place and time.

I often find that I’m as interested in the idea of a place as the place itself and think the actual and the imagined versions are equally valid. What I attempt to do through my practice is to tap into some of that disposition. Including peat and local soils into my sculpture gives the work an innate link to the landscape, something which I believe to be very important in my practice, the ability to evoke that sense of place.