My story
I make drawings, paintings and precious metal jewellery, all hand made and one of a kind.
My drawing and painting is a direct response to the rhythms and the vitality contained within music, sound and movement. Duration and dynamic range suggest the timing and eventual scale of my work. The energetic lines and colour layering are created with charcoal, graphite, powder pigments, pastels and acrylic paints.
After capturing the essence of a movement or sound onto paper, my drawings become the basis for jewellery designs. Working directly from two dimensions into gold and silver, I make sculptural pieces that hold the potency, and the memory of the original piece of music or dance. By forging onto metal stakes, pace, flow and direction is held within the object creating a wearable moment in time.
I completed my dance training at The Laban Centre for Movement and Dance and went on to dance with Rambert Dance Company and Siobhan Davies Dance, making dance, touring and performing for nearly 30 years.
In 2000, I began jewellery evening classes, running from the dance studio to the workshop once a week. After seven years of this I realised I wanted to know more and enrolled on an MA course at Central St Martins. It was here my fascination with transforming dance into objects began, exploring how to hold the essence of movement inside precious metal.
The transitory nature of dance is its beauty and frustration. I had spent many years walking into an empty studio and spending hours re-finding what I was doing yesterday. So, the desire to see what I was working on the day before sitting there just as I left it was strong - an object holding all my thoughts and ideas ready to start.
Drawing has always been the bridge between dance and jewellery for me. But it was working with artist and bookbinder Tracey Rowledge, on our collaboration What Isn’t Here Hasn’t Happened (2011), a series of large graphite drawings, that gave me the confidence to think of my drawing and painting as an integral part of my practice.
In 2012/13 I became the first jeweller in residence at the British Library which resulted in a series of drawings and jewellery Body 30’57. This was the first time sound and music, rather than movement, became the springboard for my work.
Recent article HERE
