I am a painter, printmaker and runner based in Levenwick, Shetland. Working primarily in oil paints and screen-printing, my practice is rooted in my engagement with this place I call home. Much of my thinking occurs while running alone along the coastline where movement, rhythm and a connection to the environment create space for observation and reflection. During these runs I form ‘word sketches’ - brief, intuitive responses to what I see and feel, which later inform my studio work. 

It is impossible to escape the sea in Shetland. It shapes the land, and to some extent the people, and it permeates my work. I use painting to explore the shifting moods, light and colour of the Shetland skies and seas. My work is not purely representational: instead, it is expressive and contemporary, seeking to convey the sensation of a moment rather than a fixed view.  

I am influenced by Romantic ideas of the sublime and by contemporary thinkers such as Timothy Morton, particularly in relation to environmental awe and fragility. A word sketch, the plastic stayed, captures this tension: fleeting beauty alongside persistent human traces. Through my work I aim to balance joy, exhilaration and unease, expressing a lived relationship with place shaped by movement, weather and time. 

the colours and shapes of our destruction 

plastic 

on my beach that looks so clean and pure 

left on the tideline 

tangled in the seaweed 

the more you look the more you see 

a snow shower came and went  

the plastic stayed