Am I a female, an artist, a culture or an emotion?

My work is explorative of differentiating aspects of identity, individuality and emotion. Primarily interested in the 'traditional' and nostalgia, I have utilised old family photographic references and Victorian portraiture for inspiration, translating such influences through my use of traditional medium format black and white photographic film.

I am interested and dedicated to individually sculpting each image from beginning to end, carrying out all mark-making, toning and developing of films and prints myself. This process has built substantially on my technical skill base and aided my photographic and printmaking knowledge and understanding.

My thematic concentrations have sought to project my individual visual dialogues through pictorial production, and this has allowed me to strip away the layers of 'self' in front of the lens by dissecting my individuality and identity.

My current practice has evolved into an amalgamation of identity, self, gender and the communication of such issues through the use of monochromatic stills. The absence of colour is representational of nostalgic elements and influences such as family albums and collected aesthetic objects which link intercultural visual dialogue with cultural identity, self/female identity and individual voice.

In order to create a body of work that is both reflective of my historical influences and heritage and my contemporary existence and personal development, I found it was important to create another dimension to the traditional photographic work being produced. My completed works  are therefore a combination of medium format negatives developed using modern, alternative photographic and printmaking techniques.

The subtlety of mark making can be explored through unconventional photographic techniques by exploiting surface boundaries on metal, glass and wood, providing a integral interplay between the contemporary and the archaic within my artistic practice.

My images are printed onto aluminium plates using exposed fine mesh silk screens, and hard, exterior metal paint consisting of black and glossy white tones which are added to the plates in the final stages in order to create an archaic effect using modern photographic and printmaking advancements and subtle mark-making.

The use of aluminium plates are intended to provide another reflective dimension to the pictorial sources produced, whilst simultaneously taking reference from old, dated photographic means and plate photography such as Daguerreotypes. The completed images are protected and framed within simple, traditional grey box frames.