Reflective notes.
 
 
As well as being a full time artist working from my studio in Hackney Wick, London, I also employed as an artist for the NHS - delivering my own expressive arts programme for NHS mental health secure units across North and East London. I am also founder of Hackney Wick Life Drawing.

Working class social issues, lived experience in complicated environments, mental health and a history with the police currently define my studio art practise. Large scale nude self portrait paintings are my visual language and instinctive reactions to my life experiences. My work is personal, it comes from the inside. On display are my emotions from early childhood trauma and dangerously exciting life experiences that eventually led to my engagement with NHS services. I have painted since I was very young and continued right through until present day - I've been told my marks are raw, violent and sexually charged. Ethics means everything to me now.

Innovation: This is probably something I obsess and spend countless hours fantasizing about. But what I'm more sure about is that in recent years I have began to understand my compulsive mark makings, drawings and paintings of nudes a lot more. I understand a lot further of the environments I create in which to paint and try to nurture innovative thoughts, I try to induce profound thinking. With my Therapy Wall (idea) approach within NHS MHT Forensic and secure units, the use of a fire extinguisher (that expels acrylic paint) has made firm foundations and given context to my large scale expressive nude paintings and drawings. To date, two White Papers and two Research Evaluation papers have been produced and published on how, why and the environments I paint in. Its effects  and outcomes are noted and therorised with recommendations also included.  





"Rule breaking"... "Leading a quiet revolution to change the way that mental health care is provided,   talked about and seen"  -  Dazed, quote from an interview in 2016.