Artist’s Statement

I enjoy working in Collage because, like the music we play, it lends itself to improvisation, experimentation and collaboration with others. At the same time the discipline of deconstruction and reconstruction of media into new forms and meanings subverts but is reliant on the past - on sampling the products and ideas of dominant social discourse and mainstream media and re-imagining them into new narratives that challenge history, the now and and our assumptions about reality. Collage blends lines and shapes and colour into visually engaging pictures that, like stills from a film are meticulously constructed but meaningless without the context of the past, the parts and the piecing together. It offers a keyhole view of an alternative reality. I am a collage artist that shies away from the traditional but chaotic mixed media approach to collage preferring precision cut lines and placement, with hours spent combing through images to find the right tone, texture and lines to flow seamlessly like an analogue photoshop image where it's not always clear where one part finishes and the next begins. As a mirror of my lived experience, my collages incorporate themes of environmentalism, social justice, feminism and elements that suggest movement, journey and growth.