Over the last year there has been a profound shift in my practice. Moving away from realism and a highly planned process, I have started working from an internal, emotional space shaped by memory and lived experience. Recent drawings, collages, and mixed media pieces centre around a recurring female figure, part self-portrait, part invention.

She’s born from the wild highs and lows of my youth: the emptiness of lost weekends, dance floor transcendence, and outrageous outfits. I’m exploring the grief in letting go of those earlier selves, but also a ferocious kind of freedom. At the core of this new work is a wild, feminine energy and a refusal to be boxed in. Returning to colour, theatricality and intuitive mark-making feels like reconnecting with my younger self and an artist I couldn’t be before now.

The resulting work occupies a space between vulnerability and defiance, tracing the internal movements, (rupture, resilience, memory), that shape identity. This new direction is a reclamation of voice, instinct and authenticity, and my bid for creative freedom in mid-life.