My art practice and methods of work evolved from childhood, noticing the way sunlight reflects on windows, or the sky darkens behind winter trees. As a lifelong migraine sufferer, I also experienced visual distortion and auras, beautiful glints of light and colour which I always found to be meaningful. As a child I was a great gatherer of information, adoring compiling projects. An early reader, I did not realise I was dyslexic until my 30’s, which had given me an utter fixation with text, words and meaning.

Like many creative people, I cite some childhood experiences as the blueprint to how I work now, my brain being hardwired in a certain way. Study, work and adulthood have certainly given me more ability to manifest my ideas and finish larger projects, but I feel I still think the same.

I compile vast collections of images, windows, shadows, suggestions. Also ideas, phrases, stories I would like to write, films I would like to make. This archive is my collection of sketchbooks, and has become my preferred view of the world, in that when I see a particularly good cloud, I like to remember a cloud piece I made and see nature imitating art. I always refer to my own images for work, and consider the influence of other art equal to all influence – novels, films, music, science, nature, life and above all, people.

For a Moving Image work, I work on an idea of something I would like to express, perhaps the flow of time in life, or some experience of existing. This usually coincides with an image which comes to me. Grasping these fleeting ideas, I start to write, notes, words, trying to define to myself this notion. Equally, methods in expressing visually the tone of the idea suggest themselves to me – a way of printing, a use of light, a type of place or atmosphere.

When I get a starting point, my job is to keep that vision clear in my head while I try to manifest it, taking footage, visiting places to film, or making something. I work alone, and enjoy inventing solutions to problems I have created for myself. Gradually the elements come together, and I have enough to make the piece. Although I have a repertoire of editing techniques, I always find myself trying something different and inventing new methods to realise the piece. I work frame by frame, layer by layer, both polishing up my footage, and going where the technique suggests.​

My musical training has given me a legacy of live performance. I would rather take video footage 20 or 30 times over to get it right, than to piece together a version from various segments. I also have a hands-on darkroom approach to the computer – it speeds up my work, but I will make an image dark rather than darken it using a programme, or I will distort it through glass manually when shooting. This pedantic approach may be subtle, but I firmly believe that it maintains the integrity of my vision, and also is picked up, even subliminally, by the eye, and even in digital video.