Dirt Out. Power In.

It interesting to me that the two images chosen by the gallery to represent this show were painted one after the other: one (the dragon) being the last thing I painted before giving birth to my second baby, and the other ("letting go") being the first thing I painted after giving birth.  Someone who didn't know my work, looking at these two pieces side by side would probably assume they were painted by two different people.

My work has matured; become more complex, involved and laboured, in much the same way as the rest of my life has.  I aim to tell more complicated stories with each painting, in keeping with the more complicated dramas being played out internally.   Looking back on older work, I feel nostalgia for more simple times; there is a naivety and spontaneity inherent in those earlier pieces that has perhaps been lost in the finer details of later work. 

My intention with this show has been to make an attempt at 'marrying' those two elements from my earlier and later work, shine some of the pure, simple light of my earlier work onto the darker, more complex side of it that has been emerging over the last couple of years; it is also an attempt to unite contradictions within my own world, weave some of that naivety back into the wiser, harder 'reality' that is growing up (yup, still growing up). 

I like to engage with the darker, more convoluted side of life, and it has become all the more important to me to do that through painting since having children (as it is now harder to do so through any other agent).  But I also want to reconcile that with something driven by hope and optimism, hence the 'regression' to earlier creative states.