My work is grounded in the belief that art is a way of processing and understanding a life lived. I hope that in making it I can help others to recognize their own experience and make sense of it.
It began with an interest in place, and finding that certain places reflected back at me aspects of my own state of mind and inner life. I began thinking about belonging, how identity has been constructed around place and about what ‘displacement’ means. How displacement may not be literal but also psychological; life events may produce such a psychic shock as to displace us internally. We may become “off-centred,” in the words of the Polish American writer, Eva Hoffman.
Architecture has been one of the key reference points. I think of architecture as a metaphor for the emotional framework and I believe that in Western culture at least, our architecture embodies the vain hope that things can stay the same, the illusion that chaos and unpredictability can be controlled.
But though the work acknowledges that insecurity, unpredictability and collapse are part of life, there is also recognition of the strength and resilience of the human spirit, and that embracing change and turbulence, though difficult, gives life meaning and richness.