I am an expressive painter working with the theme of memory and place. My work is based on my personal childhood memories where I revisit places from my past to provoke emotion. These places are shop fronts, family homes and different buildings from the area that I live in, varying from Lisburn to Belfast and the surrounding countryside. I use imagination throughout my process as how I remember these places may not be accurate to what was once real. From a childlike memory I imagine these places to be full of colour which is the reasoning behind my vibrant colour scheme within my paintings. Not only is this to please my own fantasy for my work but also to create a sensory response to the viewer through use of colour and shape. My paintings are created using oil paint on canvas, I use a range of different lines, shapes, and marks in an expressive manner so that the buildings can be viewed on the edge of abstraction, but also with a sense of what they are. My paintings reflect my personal past and where I come from. By sharing buildings as memories, I share some of the most important places that have been around throughout my life and how they have moulded who I am today. My aim is that the viewer feels positive emotions when looking at my paintings and the colours allow them to feel youthful and remember times from their own personal past.
