A Scottish born Southland artist, for as long as I can remember – even as a small child lying in the grass looking at the clouds drift by – I have been aware of and captivated by the natural beauty of the lands and skies that have nourished and cloaked me, and my response to them. My art explores and celebrates my connection and resonance with nature’s land, sea, and sky scapes – the interplay between the Heavens and earth, sunlight and moonlight and water, a sense of place and space and rhythm in life and nature, hope, faith and light amid darkness and drama, solitude, gratitude, nostalgia and memories. Above all I am captured and inspired by fleeting views or moments that stop me in my tracks – when I become absorbed by the last rays of evening light, wild empty places, windswept dunes, moonlit beaches, the poignancy of an abandoned house, the otherworldly fragile or sacred nature of a place, or something elusive that triggers a feeling or a thread of memory. The transient moment in time when I am moved or engaged by the subject, and my response to it, is what motivates and inspires me to paint, and what I aspire to capture and communicate to the viewer. My work moves between representational and the imagined and undefined, between the seen and the suggested. The resulting artwork may be observed and representational or it may diverge from the original subject, meandering into the imaginative and intuitive, developing its own meaningful interpretation – not necessarily of a specific place or location. I predominantly work in layers with oils on canvas. Occasionally an artwork will come to life in just a few layers of paint expression and time, but often it takes many layers and months before it feels fully expressed and shows itself. Whether the resulting artwork is representational intuited or imagined, it is the energy of the feeling, the idea, the memory, or the magic in the experienced moment that I aspire to capture and share with the viewer, inviting them to be drawn in, to contemplate, to feel, to resonate, to appreciate nature and the moments of beauty and joy we are gifted in this life, and to be inspired, restored, transported, moved or uplifted as I was.