A little bit about me…
 

     My love for illustration started from a young age when my mother use to take out books for us from the library and we would read them together at night. I marvelled at the illustrations that I saw which inspired me to create my own books which I would place in-between ‘the real’ books at the library. I thought people would love my books as much as I did and take them out and read them too. This love for illustration continued at university where I created Artist’s Books from my second year all the way through to my Honours. Now as an adult, my art lends itself to book covers and experimental topics and I also plan to illustrate children’s books in the near future.
 

     My background is in Fine Art and as such, I favour a traditional approach with regards to media and aesthetics when creating my work. When I write about my work, I often use poetic language because I personify not only my artwork but also the personal experience of making it. For this reason, my work shares a likeness with the world of ‘fantasy’ but fits rather into the category of “Magical Realism”. Everything within the image is ‘real’, including my experience of making it. Unlike the literary genre of Magical Realism, my work is not political but it shares some common ground in that images have realistic representations of elements that are juxtaposed in unusual ways. Additionally, this type of personification creeps into my abstract work which either focuses on the elements of art such as line, shape and colour or takes a more organic approach by allowing the media to ‘indulge’ itself first, before I tamper with it.
 

     Whether realistic or abstract in style, nature and the environment around me are always my first sources of inspiration. My second, is the properties of the media I work with which often dictate the feel and essence of a piece. I use these two sources to work intuitively so that during the art-making process, there is a soliloquy between me and the artwork and the experience thereof manifests visually. This internal form of communication is an intimate experience which I share with the viewer. It is not my aim for the viewer to know my thoughts but rather to share in the experience of the image’s beauty and have their own connection, and thus dialogue with it. This is one of the main reasons why I see most, if not all, of my work as illustrations. Each piece contains a narrative or story that can be discovered when considering both the text and image.