Artist Statement

My practice is driven by curiosity about materials: how they behave, react to one another, and change the direction of a work. I move between painting, drawing, works on paper, textiles and spatial interventions, often introducing materials that do not traditionally belong to painting. I am interested in what happens when these different elements meet—when they absorb, resist, pull, stain, tear or transform the surface.

My background in science influences the way I work. I approach the studio through a process close to experimentation: I try, observe, analyse and adjust. One action produces a reaction, and what I observe determines what happens next. I may begin with an idea or a structure, but I leave space for the material to respond and sometimes contradict my intentions.

Over the years, my work has increasingly explored this relationship between intention and material behaviour. Acrylic, charcoal, oil pastel, thread, textiles, handmade paper, raw canvas and found materials enter the work because of what they can do, not simply because of how they look. Sometimes I deliberately introduce something that does not seem to belong. Its presence changes the existing system and forces me to respond. The material becomes an active participant in the process.

This also reflects how I look at the structures around us—the systems, classifications, expectations and conventions we create to organise ourselves and society. I feel the need to question these structures while recognising that I exist within them. I am not interested in destroying order or replacing it with chaos, but in challenging it from within and exploring whether it can be reorganised differently.

Cuts, punctures, interruptions and threads disturb what has already been constructed, but rupture is rarely the end of the process. Most often, what has been disrupted is reassembled. A thread can bind, connect or redirect; a cut can break the surface while creating a new relationship between its parts. I see these interventions as subtle acts of resistance rather than gestures of destruction.

I challenge structure, but I also need structure. I am interested in how far something can be questioned, displaced or broken while remaining connected to what was there before. The possibility of finding another order, rather than simply rejecting the existing one, is central to my work.

For me, an artwork is an evolving system. I act on the material, observe what happens and respond. The composition may ultimately appear resolved or unresolved, but this is not the point. I consider a work finished when I perceive that the dialogue between myself and the material has ended. Whether it has reached balance or remains unstable is secondary; what matters is that the process of action, reaction and response has reached its own conclusion.