head-holding device, 2025, self portrait
Statement
When I was sixteen we lived in a tall thin house. We got a new rope fire escape and had to practise using it. I put the rope like a noose round my torso and climbed out of the top storey window. One of my brothers was in the room egging me on. My stepmother was there too, killing herself laughing and my other brother was outside trying to look up my skirt. I could see that the rope was loose and I was going to drop several feet before the slack was taken up. I couldn’t get any words out. In the end I had to let go.
The playfulness of language, the multiplicity of meaning within both words and objects, and the possibilities these daily basics afford us, is at the core of my practice. I want to feel sick and excited, on the edge of laughing or crying. Drawing is the ‘in’ for me: it’s the closest to writing and talking without using words - materially adjacent, simple, very little required, intuitive and accessed by most people at an early point in their lives. My tools and impetus for drawing are the man made detritus I find on roadsides and urban and green spaces. Some I draw with directly and some are flattened and enlarged into templates, with which I make repetitive intuitive marks with ink, pen and graphite on found papers. Collecting materials is a regular activity: accessing meaning, suggestion, memory and emotion within objects. My sculptural works and short film collaborations extend the use of these incidental objects, working with human hair and teeth, blankets, furniture and domestic items, to reflect on human experience, connection and tenderness: the work is always in close proximity to the body. For me, humour is an essential counterbalance to the escalating fear, hatred and power play in wider society and a useful tool for understanding personal experience including gendered imbalance, brain disease, local, family and societal politics and the effort of trying to maintain a thriving art practice.
born Toronto, Canada 1966
UWE Bristol MA Fine Art 2017-20
Chelsea School of Art BA Hons Fine Art 1985-88
Wimbledon School of Art foundation diploma 1983-84
Stroud Illustration Collective (S I C)
Critical Mass // Draw 2024-25
Lives and works in Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK
recent solo and joint exhibitions
GRAVITY survey exhibition Chapels of Rest, Stroud, 5 - 28 June 2026
RICHARD multi-projection installation with Anna Cady Chapels of Rest Stroud, Stroud Film Festival 2024
(both laughing) Collaborative retrospective F Block, Bower Ashton Campus UWE Bristol 2024
Artist Curator ‘houseworkwork’ SITE FESTIVAL (both laughing) Collaborative Stroud
SPacejUNK drawing project exhibition SVA John Street Gallery, Stroud 2022
TODAY drawing project exhibition SVA John Street Gallery, Stroud 2020
CHATTELS Moveable Objects with Paul Grellier Chapels of Rest, Stroud
selected recent exhibitions
2026
STROUD SENSATION Gallery Pangolin , Chalford 13 June - 29 August
2026 IRVING OPEN Irving Gallery, Oxford 31 January - 28 February
WordArt GOOD ON PAPER PARTY (both laughing) Collaborative Lansdown Gallery, Stroud 31 January - 2 February
2025
DRAWING THE NIGHT IN Black Swan Arts, Frome
RWA 172 OPEN Bristol
PAPER WORKS BIENNIAL OPEN RWA Bristol
7th JOHN RUSKIN PRIZE Trinity Buoy Wharf, London
2024
DRAWING IN THE ARCTIC CIRCLE Gallery Napa,Lapland
DRAWING THE NIGHT INYoung GallerySalisbury, curated by Susan Francis & Prudence Maltby
RWA 171 OPEN Bristol
50/50 Unit 1 Gallery London
TRINITY BUOY WHARF DRAWING PRIZE 2023 touring exhibition
A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN Irving Gallery, Oxford
6th JOHN RUSKIN PRIZE Trinity Buoy Wharf, London
2023
ARC Salon Painswick, Glos
RWA 170th OPEN. Bristol
TRINITY BUOY WHARF DRAWING PRIZE Trinity Buoy Wharf and touring UK
WELLS ART CONTEMPORARY Wells Cathedral
OPEN_OPEN Chapel Arts Studios, Andover
Artist Curator MY BODY IN MY HANDS (with Sam Lucas) SVA John Street Gallery, Stroud
SFSA DRAWING OPEN no format gallery, London
SALON FOR A SPECULATIVE FUTURE -’How to be in the future’ WOMEN ARTISTS’ PRINT PORTFOLIO EXHIBITION Publication Launch and Portfolio Exhibition (both laughing) Collaborative MOCA, London
SWEAR IT ON A DUSTER The Duster Project and Profanity Embroidery Group Twelve Tap Gin Bar, Whitstable & HOLD, Ramsgate
2022
SALON FOR A SPECULATIVE FUTURE - WOMEN ARTISTS’ PRINT PORTFOLIO EXHIBITION / IMPACT 12 Multidisciplinary Printmaking Conference (both laughing) Collaborative UWE Library, Bower Ashton, Bristol
FREE RANGE UWE Alumni Exhibition Truman Brewery, London
WORDplay Fringe Arts Bath
SFSA DRAWING OPEN no format Gallery, London
A ROOM OF HER OWN Irving Contemporary, Oxford
WORKS ON PAPER 4 Blue Shop Cottage, London
2021
NOWHERE SOMETIME online @consciousisolation curated in collaboration with UoG students
2020
HUMANISING MEDICINE ‘Covid19-Apart But Together’ BEING HUMAN FESTIVAL 2020 Queen Mary University of London
TRINITY BUOY WHARF DRAWING PRIZE Trowbridge, Dundee, London, Bournemouth
EAT, SLEEP, (I CAN’T) BREATHE www.vacantmuseum.com
2019
MERCATUS LIBER – VENICE VENDING MACHINE Venice Agendas Hamilton House, Bristol
HUMANISING MEDICINE – ‘this time it’s personal’ BEING HUMAN FESTIVAL Bart’s Pathology Museum, London
RWA 167 OPEN Bristol
INCENDIARY Stroud & Hardwick Campus University of Glos curated by Patricia Brien
2018
EVERYONE IS VERY HAPPY AND NOT CONFUSED Hamilton House, Bristol
LYNN PAINTER STAINERS Mall Galleries, London
ART WOMEN AND THE EVOLUTION The Bloomsbury, London
2017
RWA 165 OPEN Bristol
2016
JERWOOD DRAWING PRIZE London, Bath, Leigh, Bournemouth
ING DISCERNING EYE Mall Galleries, London
Exhibition history 1994 - 2026
talks, conferences, events, residencies, reviews
From Vaults to Chapels In conversation with Angela Findlay, June 18 2026
Dr Paul Harper text - Gravity exhibition, Stroud 2026
PECHA KUCHA NIGHTS at SVAby in Good on Paper Nick Grellier 2025
RICHARD - a response Dr Paul Harper 2024
WHAT IS DRAWING RESEARCH? Symposium & exhibition (both laughing) Collaborative UWE BCU Drawing Research Group Birmingham School of Art Nov 2023
PROOF! (both laughing) Collaborative Postgraduate Research Conference UWE Bristol June 2023
(both laughing) Collaborative residency At The Garage March 2022 and Jan 2023
LOCKDOWN 1 Drawing Symposium Pecha Kucha online Drawing is Free / Drawing Projects UK Feb 2022
“Making Their Mark. Why artists draw: an interrogation of drawing as a subjective, autobiographical and emotional act” with Emily Lucas PhD research project 2020
www.a-n.co.uk/reviews/today/ review of TODAY drawings exhibition Artists Newsletter Trevor H Smith 2020
www.studiointernational.com/index.php/trinity-buoy-wharf-drawing-prize-2020-review-cooper-gallery-university-of-dundee-scotland 2020
“A Slight Increase In Happiness : a discussion on constructive thinking via a year of drawing” Bricks Bristol artist talk Jan 2020
“Bad Drawing : intentions for, and status of drawing” artist talk 2020
“Mighty Pencil : drawing and language, the funny and the sad” artist talk 2020
PECHA KUCHA NIGHTS Stroud producer 2024 ongoing
Experimental drawing workshop co-producer with Anna Cady at Stroud Film Festival March 2026
SELECT TALKS producer Centre for Science and Art Stroud 2017-2019
Works held in Tate Archives, RA Print Collection, Gloucestershire Archives (both laughing), ARC Salon.
Private collections UK, USA, Canada, S. Africa and Europe.
Ectoplasm (still) 2024