I completed a Fine Art degree at Cambridge School of Art in 2020 after a long career in mental health care. I am interested in the representation of architectural and urban subjects altered by being viewed through hand made glass. I explore the play of light through glass, on glass itself and how glass disturbs line and colour. All proceeds from my work go to Jimmy’s Cambridge a charity that provides accommodation and support. I am a long term supporter of this charity. I worked with them professionally and then as a trustee. Their work continues to be as vital as ever.
2025 has been about further exploring light through glass including the previous theme of distortions through hand-made glass from new photographs of Dresden painting in oils and watercolour. The paintings were a continuing exploration of the abstraction created by glass and the isolation of a restricted element of a scene. The scene dissolves into forms and planes that are not specifically located or recognisable. The image prompts new interpretations specific to the viewer’s own memories and experiences.
Last year I did a series of paintings inspired by Jeannette Josse’s art photograph of a cabinet of glassware. She showed me a dazzling photograph of a cabinet of wine glasses alive with reflected and refracted light. I was intrigued and challenged and interpreted this image in several watercolour and oil paintings. I worked with the play of light and the rhythm of the forms as they interact and repeat into abstraction. This has led to Jeannette and I having more conversations about our creative work. These exchanges have been energising and enjoyable and resulted in a joint exhibition of work which reflects the way that both of us tend to zoom in on parts of a view or image to obtain compositions that are make the scene ambiguous, intriguing and universal. The method of transformation by going in closer to detail and attending to parts of a photograph or view gives the viewer new interpretations of everyday objects and architecture. We exhibit these experiments in Cambridge Open Studios 2025 and hope you enjoy them.
Refractions and reflections - a cabinet of wine glasses. 2024 Oil on canvas board 28 x 41cm.