Artist Statement

A seminal moment in the evolution of my art practice was hearing the tale of the Aran fishermen who wore sweaters that had been knitted with specific arrangements of stitches, which would identify them to a particular location. The purpose of this was so that drowned bodies could be returned to their home village.
This myth resonated with me on several levels. It highlights the enduring and constant struggle against the natural elements, it epitomizes the sense of belonging within a tight knit community and it employs the use of visual symbols to encode cultural identity.
For me, the construction of knitted artefacts relates strongly to the structure of written language. Both have linear qualities and characteristic shapes that grow from a moving hand. This has connotations with the art of calligraphy and intuitive mark making. The language of knitting is complex and meaningless to the uninitiated. The notion of knitting as code fascinates me and it is the exploration of the cryptic content of knitting terminology, the dissection of the familiar, the obscure and the ambiguous between language and craft that drives my work and underpins my practice.
Through the exploration of ceramic, encaustic and printmaking techniques I have endeavoured to probe the linguistic and symbolic aspects of the art of knitting.