I first began working in collage in 1983. In the early works I used paper but soon took to integrating the treasures I found on the beach: unusually formed wood and stones, shell and bone fragments, pottery shards, feathers. The materials themselves tell us their history: the impressions left by nature, by the passing of time and by human contact.  Their story so often echoes our own.

Working with such evocatively charged materials, however, it's easy to fall into cliché.  A feather so readily suggests flight or freedom, - a bone, mortality. Sometimes I try to obscure the elements in order to bury their associations.  By taking them out of context, both the viewer and I are made to look again, to rethink our “pre-knowledge” of what they are and to see them as forms rather than specific objects. At the same time, their essence is fundamental to the work.

One of the recurring themes in my work is the concept of home.  As well as my own experience of northern and southern hemispheres, the work often speaks of two halves, of complements and completion, and of our attempts to reconcile the contradictions within us.