My practice is based in portraiture. For me, the portrait is not only a representation of the subject, but it is also a reflection of myself. The need to express myself has always been very acute in me. Coming from a large family and having suffered from acute shyness most of my life, my art became the best avenue, and the human face the most accessable subject through which I could communicate and express what I was feeling inside. I could read a face, the muscular arrangement that conveys the owners personality and thoughts and the subtle alterations which change the expression, revealing the new thoughts within.

As I have gone through college, I have found more freedom to express myself through colour, materials and also through scale. Over the last two years I experienced great personal difficulties and found that my work needed to become 'louder' for it to be a more realistic representation of my emotional condition hence the shift to the bright colours which were dominent over the period.

My works are intense expressions of myself and I hope to engage the viewer directly through them. Achieving a 'likeness' is not my main concern, rather it is my intention to portray the sitters character and personality while revealing myself and my emotions at the same time. My preferred approach is to work directly from life, but I also employ combinations of photographs and memory to inform my work. I illuminate my subjects in a variety of ways to communicate different moods and tensions.

My work references the painting of historical artists that includes Rembrandt, Caravaggio and Reubens, and from a contemporary perspective, the work of Ewan Uglow, Jenny Saville, Frank Auerbach, Glenn Brown, and Lucien Freud.