In this work I use images of a frozen and haunted landscape as a metaphor to investigate the relationship between longing and memory. Figures inhabit the landscapes in the form of ghosts, spirits, birds, reincarnated souls and zombies. I question why we remember the things we do and what memory leaves out. The memories that do stay with us and keep returning, like the ghost or zombie, have a tangible presence and absence at the same time. Both are caught in between two states of being: here but not here, gone but not quite.

I have been looking at Chinese art from around the Sung dynasty, hand scrolls, scholar's rock and brush paintings. I am interested in the expressive qualities, unusual abstractions, repetition of forms and the non -hierarchical perspective in the landscape. I also very much relate to how the art conventions of that time and culture highly mediated artists' ways if representing nature.

I am trying to combine different contrasting moods or responses. I want the images to be scary and funny, sad and happy, tacky and elegant all at once. I am interested in the effect of different materials against the delicacy of the mulberry paper, and how different textures can add to the meaning of the work. The resistance of a pencil against the surface or the crumpling caused by the particles in the iridescent ink adds physicality to the paintings themselves. I see them as flat sculptures.