Redoutes Book, Anatomical watercolours.

I was successful as a student, achieved a first class hons degree in Painting and sold my degree show which funded a 2 year trip around South East Asia. On my return I was accepted to the Slade and at the end of my post grad I was awarded the Gillian Award by SACI in Florence for a year before taking up a two year residency at Belfast Printworkshop in the 1990s. The day I arrived in Belfast a huge bomb blew a section of the business area of the city including the Arts Council gallery. I salvaged a book Redoutes Most Beautiful flowers from the bonfire of all the destroyed books full of glass and water damaged, I worked painting anatomical specimens at the City Hospital in partnership with Redoutes flowers also cut at the stem, I sought visual equivalents between the body parts and the flower specimens. Both plants and humans cut down in their prime, a meditation on violence, beauty
and decay. The water damaged book continues to grow mold at the centre of every folio.