I have started painting in earnest for the first time in my life, even though I have been learning and teaching it for decades. That is to say, I have begun to find a reason to paint.

A painting doesn't just carry the trace of a subject, of one type of matter. It is a trace of both the subject matter and the human maker, who leaves a trace of themselves in this mutable material*.  It is their gestures or lack of them, they leave visible in the work. In my painting practice, by focusing on certain sites, I am observing not only what the light makes of these sites, but what I, the maker, makes of them. 

My work and research has wound its way back to mining. But it’s sort of connected into a broader theme of contemporary artists’ and wider culture’s current obsession with archeology.

I recently replied to an old friend and work colleague, Patricia Cain, as part of a conversation regarding a paper she was preparing following her conference presentation and exhibition: Body of Knowledge: Art and Embodied Cognition Conference 2019. She is exploring first-person methodologies in research, particularly in connection with neurodiversity, and valuing and enabling difference in society, including within research structures.