I started painting shared places around Brighton and Hove in the midst of the COVID pandemic. During national lockdowns these places would be abandoned and empty, but retained the traces and marks of people. I became interested in these places to help feel connected to an absent community and to encourage myself to be more conscious and present in my surroundings.

I often choose to paint mundane places, which I'd normally only half notice, and change the colours and forms in an attempt to see them differently. I'm interested in the marks people leave in shared places as a way of expressing themselves, which is often in conversation with environment expressing itself through signage and it's architecture.

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Revaluating my surroundings has also led to an interest in utility and the functional designs that we encounter daily, how these objects form part of the background and landscape of the city, and the ways in which these objects can influence our behaviour.

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I paint landscapes on recycled cardboard envelopes with acrylic paint. I was able to reclaim a ready supply of cardboard from deliveries during COVID lockdowns, which was for practical reasons, and have continued to use recycled card as much as possible.

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I have recently started painting found objects, or 'street gifts', as still lifes. These are painted on canvas with acrylic paint.

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