Artist Statement

As an artist, I am curious about materials: what their limits are, and what they are capable of. I am drawn to working with everyday materials, such as party decorations, candles, and predominantly soap. Working with materials that are present in most people’s day to day life, establishes a common ground for viewers to connect to the work. Soap is an ever-changing material, by itself it can dry out, with long exposure to moisture it begins to break down. It is unstable and changing, and my use of pastel colour and translucent materials reinforces its delicacy. This is developed to a more ritualistic and sacred degree in my more recent works. Aside from the material of soap having its connotations with rituals, (hygiene, OCD), my presentation shows them as votive objects. The soap assumes a new form that straddles the organic and the manmade. It is almost as if they are artefacts, or, due to their changing states, their own living beings. They are multidimensional works, affected both by how I alter the understanding of the material, and how reality can alter the understanding.