The different materials in my work are thus assembled and transformed into a language, which speaks of my experience and of who I am. While studying the work of the Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz, I realised that it is the personal response that is more important than the overall view of our environment. They represent strength in human presence as well as evoking suffering. Like Abakanowicz's work, mine is tactile, full of condensed meaning, showing a contrast between slight mystery and a portrayal of a simple subject. In my early work I was interested in the role of stitch and fibre as historically representing women's work in a menial sense, and I made pieces which combined paint and stitch or thread in a strong positive light, thread evoking all those inferences of holding together, mending, healing.
More recent work relies on the textural paint surface which embodies symbolic stitch marks.
Language tends to be exclusive as well as inclusive and again the mystery of words combined with mystery of place or materials gives an edge of discovery or revelation to the work. My latest work has arisen out of investigating family history and the family tree, and comparing these to geographical maps. It is fascinating that our genes are passed on whatever happens to the body and eventually its procreation carries the same fragments of information to generations later. It draws them together to share their similarities and their differences. A four-way conversation between the audience, the artist, the curator and the space could really challenge boundaries.