Paper

As a paper artist I delight in creating pieces at the crossroads of art, artisanship, and design. Cutting, tearing, gluing, layering, shaping and modelling paper, I enjoy seeing creations emerge that take the ordinary and transform it into the extraordinary.

Paper is far more than a medium for me. Both material and metaphor, it gives substance and meaning to every item I make. Simple and unassuming, often overlooked, paper engages all the senses – and carries our human history. 

I am drawn to paper as much for its visual and tactile beauty, its versatile physical properties, as for what it represents: knowledge, craftsmanship and communication. Paper is a vessel – for transactions, for ideas and for beauty, across time, cultures and languages – but it also retains its own, intrinsic appeal. When played with three-dimensionally, or combined with other natural elements such as light, paper has the capacity to transform itself, transcending our perceptions.

As an expatriate artist who must regularly install her life and studio in unexpected places, the symbolism of paper as an intermediary among people matters deeply to me. Paper conveys and connects. This universal material links minds, hearts and senses together, whilst bringing us closer to the natural environment it stems from.

That inherent duality of paper, nature and culture combined, fascinates me. It expresses a frontier and a mystery at the heart of my exploration: where lies the interface between concrete and abstract, between creation and the created, between matter and thought?

Working and reworking both the surface and the substance of paper by combining manual force with other elements such as water, air, and especially the subtle power of light, I endlessly search that frontier where transformation occurs, where paper comes to life, leading to a new and unexpected beauty.