"When I was three years old I painted one of the walls in my bedroom, I felt so proud of my creation and called to my mum to show her. She asked me why I had done that. I told her the paper just wasn't big enough to contain my drawing! I felt very frustrated that she punished me." 

 

I still feel that frustration when people express the view that art is unimportant or not necessary. We see this in the way art is funded in schools, for example, and in the way everyday people express respect for ‘hard’ degree subjects over ‘soft’ ones, or one profession over another. Yet it is often thanks to art that we know so much about our own history and culture. Without a ‘soft’ visual, tactile artistic sense of our humanity, those ‘hard’ numbers from the sciences would be lifeless and cold indeed. I also think art is absolutely critical for a healthy society. For example, in education, its study can help to build emotional intelligence and an understanding of our collective cultural heritage. 

 

My art aims to promote maximum interactive engagement from the visitor, and to provoke them to think new thoughts, in new ways, and evoke their feelings and memories. The result is to offer them a learning experience, rather than keep them as simple observers.

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