Ingrained

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My parents had a beautiful old desk which, as a child, I remember being quite taken with. I would often find myself in the bedroom just looking at its surface and tracing my fingers around its swirling wood grain patterns. They were captivating and mysterious and I imagined a whole menagerie of creatures as I began to link spirals and shapes together, seeing an eye and a head here, or the formation of a giant wing or sinuous tail there.

‘Ingrained’ takes me back to those childhood years. The spiralling and whirling patterns are like those I saw locked in the beautiful dark wood of my parents’ desk. In the triptych I wanted to create an equally organic feeling – with an almost liquid quality rivers of colour create well-worn tributaries and become ‘ingrained’ into the texture. Just as in my youth, I find myself searching the image for the hint of an eye…

Ingrained ‘On the Wall’