My work begins as a direct response to the places I visit, either in the familiar landscapes around my home in Somerset or the unexpected ones encountered further afield.

As I walk, I sketch and take photographs, recording changes in light and weather, movement, structure and the patterns found in the landscape. Back in the studio, these observations become a starting point rather than something simply to reproduce, as I explore my emotional response to a place.

I work with oil and acrylic paint, alongside charcoal and pastel, building and removing layers as the image develops. I rarely know at the outset what a finished piece will become. The process of making — and allowing the materials themselves to influence the work — is as important to me as the final image.

I’m interested in how a familiar place is never the same twice. Light, weather, season and memory alter how I see the natural world. Through abstraction and observation, I try to capture something of that particular experience of a place and moment in time.