I am a classically trained cabinet maker. Prior to establishing my own practice I worked at Ronald Phillips of Mayfair and at Buckingham Palace. Though this background may be evident in my work, the skills and knowledge gleaned are put to innovative and unaccustomed uses in order to take furniture beyond the merely decorative: my furniture seeks to explore aspects of the mind through the language of organic morphology.
My practice plays on our fascination with what's inside us. It references those strange and intricate structures of contrasting compositions which overlie and interpenetrate one another. Further, it explores the means by which we have come to see inside the body; internal glimpses may be the product of trauma. They may be surgical. They may be sexual. This deliberate ambiguity seeks to elicit from the onlooker a countertransference response, because our reaction will depend as much upon what it is we think we are seeing as why we think we are seeing it. Meaning is as much a product of context as it is one's predisposition.
I find that timber is particularly appropriate as the matrix for expression. Shaped with sharpened steel this organic material may be incised, dissected, lacerated. The off-whites of bleached sycamore replicate bone, the warmer hues of cherry softer tissue. The grain can suggest muscle striation. Veneer can suggest integument.
As a cabinet maker I strive for elegance and beauty in the form of functional furniture. As an artist I am primarily interested in the elicitation of an emotional response, because that response has the capacity to reveal to the onlooker something about their perceptions and their preconceptions.