My work is telling stories. But as an oral tale told in front of a fire, those stories are subject to change with each viewer, and develop into new stories through conversations.

I started with the bizarre and often gruesome tales of the Grimms brothers, Perrault, Heinrich Hoffmann, and Hilaire Belloc. I found a connection between my own concerns and fears, and the symbolic language of Fairy Tales which, across centuries speak about family and morality, gender and the relationship between the sexes, violence, emancipation and growing up and old. I like the sharpness and directness of the original Fairy stories.

Recently, the phenomena of the natural world started to penetrate my work. As a fell runner, I explore the Yorkshire moors, on my own or with my partner, facing the wind, the rain, the bleakness and the isolation, and all the obstacles that nature throws at me. I explore the wilderness in its raw and unforgiving way, and that is something that attract me.   So I began looking into literature and poems which talk about these crude and primeval feelings that the wilderness brings, and also started collecting bones and feathers on my excursions.  

Mixing all the different influences, my work ends up being very theatrical, exaggerated and playful. It's distorted and out of scale: A play between the metamorphosis of the ordinary and familiar and the grotesque. It also reveals the dark humour which is often present in these stories.

 My ideas are explored through painting, sculpture and installation.