As Lucia Capacchione Ph.D writes in The Power of Your Other Hand (2001) I have discovered that my inner child speaks through my left hand. I have therefore recently concentrated on making small drawings and paintings using both my dominant and non-dominant hand, which feels like I am able, at will, to move between my adult way of being and my much younger self. 

My drawings and paintings are informed by John Bowlby’s book titled A Secure Base (1988). The psychologists’ research delves into the parent-child attachment theory and healthy human development, which he argues, is of paramount importance in the child’s first three years.  Damage carried out during this period can have profound affects later in life and adversely affect the person’s way of parenting. Hence Bowlby states that cycles of damage and abuse can be passed on from one generation to the next within the family unless help and support are given.

I use several mediums to explore Bowlby’s theory. Watercolour a sensitive tender material, fibre tips brash and bright along with oils that have a wonderful buttery vibrancy.  All my work is small in size but interrogates a complicated and challenging subject.  My paintings could be described as aesthetically childlike with more than a hint of the idiosyncratic along with at times the macabre or Gothic undertones.