The Wonder of Small Things : Pebbles and Stones

The Wonder of Small Things Series honours the act of looking closely and discovering something special.
​
​I am fascinated by how form reflects experience and history, and how these ideas can be expressed visually. I am particularly drawn to beach pebbles and have been excited by the way their distinct colours, shapes, textures, and surfaces suggest unique journeys shaped by movement, erosion, and time. 

I have been making work about the sensation of touch: both feeling the pebbles in my hands as I draw and working the materials (charcoal and paint) into a surface with my finger tips.
​ 
This body of work developed from paintings of the colours, shapes and shadows of pebbles on a beach on the Greek island of Alonissos. Returning to my practice after caring for my teenage daughter through 2 years of serious illness, I found the simplicity of the forms very comforting: stones are solid and still, yet each is unique and shaped by its history. I see them as metaphors for human experience and our material existence: we are the shapes that our lives have worn us into, just as a pebble is sculpted by the force of the sea and years of constant attrition.

Exploring the formal elements of line, shape, tone and composition through this motif, infinite in its possibilities, inside and out, positive and negative, felt and seen, is proving to be deeply satisfying and healing for me.