My work over the past few years has looked at the boundary between private and public space and how this is constantly shifting. The boundary is being tested with the advent of new technologies, as the concepts of distance and identity are being permeated and challenged particularly by the Internet. I am interested in how society constantly redefines concepts of acceptability and permission in response to this. As ‘private space’ is more narrowly confined to the domestic environment and the realm of the family, my work invariably has an autobiographic element to it.
My recent work comprises watercolour paintings of children in dreamlike settings. The mood and palette is reminiscent of nostalgic images of the early mid-twentieth century. Initially I was interested in how children in the early twenty-first century are losing their innocence so early and growing up so quickly. It seems that today’s children are in a continual state of transition or rites of passage, accelerated or indeed truncated. I started to experiment with children playing with flowers as a metaphor for their progress. My animation developed out of this concept.
31st May 2007