What is your typical studio routine?
I’m still getting familiar with my new studio at QSS which I moved into at the start of September. I think it takes a bit of time to get comfortable in a new studio space, and the studio environment is very important in my process, but I feel like my studio is beginning to feel… I don’t want to say like ‘home’, because that’s way too comfortable, (and I never want to feel too comfortable in my practice), so I’ll say energised.
 
I like my studio to be embellished with ‘stuff’ which surrounds me. This can look like fly away paper cut outs of parrots I collect, feather boas, run away beads/ buttons or knick-knacks from charity shops. As a matter of fact, that’s probably one of the most habitual parts of my studio routine. I walk to my studio through the back streets of East Belfast from where I live, and on route I comb the local charity shops before starting my day painting. Not looking for anything in particular, but if something visually interesting catches my eye, for the right price, I buy it. I’m a bit of a magpie of sorts. As a result of this eclectic mix of stuff I accumulate, my paintings come to emulate; become an extension of, or directly incorporate the stuff that occupies the space. My most recent interesting proud find was a bunch of hand carved and painted wooden tulips, which have informed some of my most recent work. So, currently, charity shops are important, Kendrick Lamar’s new album Mr Morale and the Side Steppers is important in my ears, along with a cherry scone. I eat a cherry scone everyday I’m in the studio with a cup of tea. (Punjana)
 
How do you describe your practice?
In one word, opportunistic.  As mentioned above, I have a predilection for found materials and objects, often discarded, remnants and offcuts that have a life of their own. I am restlessly experimenting with these materials and surfaces, which I use to ‘stuff’ the insides of my paintings, bursting at the seams of the four edges of the canvas, pushing my paintings into the tactile. The previous life of these materials sometimes dictates the direction of the piece and gives each painting a unique personality. This is combined with painterly technique so that they have their own potential of expression and plurality of an object and facture that gets born at the same time. My practice is an ever-evolving feedback loop of material potentials and process-based responses to things going on around me. One thing breeds to make another.
 
Is there a particular process or methodology within your practice that is important to you?
Making a painting is so, so hard. If a painting comes about too easy, I feel like I’ve cheated myself and the process. It needs to come full circle and lived a few lives before resolution – with a constant push pull/ thing happening. I usually start with an image, or something tangible that makes me want to pick up a brush. At some point, I then divorce it and let the painting tell me what it wants to be. I never want to see an illustration of my own thought. That would be so boring! Paraphrasing something art critic Jerry Saltz said on twitter ‘Becoming too wed to an idea decreases mutation in the work; only answers questions rather than asking new ones.’ I want to make something I’ve never saw before, something that surprises me when I turn up in the studio the next day. If that means doing things the ‘wrong’ way in terms of methodological painting practices, then you bet I’m doing it.
 
How long have you been working as an artist?
I graduated from my BA in Fine Art back in 2017 from Belfast School of Art. I then moved to London after being awarded a scholarship from Sir Frank Bowling to study my Master’s in fine art at Chelsea College of art in 2018. The same year, I was awarded the Tiffany & Co. x Outset Studiomakers Prize in 2019. The prize awarded me a 12-month studio space affording the opportunity to refine and develop my practice in a professional studio environment, Since then had been living and working in London right until recently, when I made the move back to Belfast to take up my lecturing post in Fine Art at Belfast School of Art.
 
Is it difficult being back in the studio after an exhibition?
For me it’s like shedding a skin. I’ve put that work into the world and it now takes on its own new existence, whereby I no longer feel fettered to it. I grow my second skin, to embark on a new journey, with a new body of work that takes on a whole new life.
 
Describe how important art is to society?
Reminds us all that we are not robots (yet)
 
What do you dislike about the artworld?
How Londoncentric the art world is, and how expensive, exclusive and inaccessible London art world is.
 
What is the best advice you have been given as an artist?
There is a great essay published by Hauser and Wirth called ‘Three Woman’ written by Elisabeth Kley, on learning from Joan Mitchell and Joyce Pensato, during her time as an intern with Joan Mitchell. There’s a part in the essay where she describes Joan critiquing a body Elisabeth’s work, and the only painting she liked was a small painting of a town church. It, at least, she said, ‘had some air between the brushstrokes.’  I have written this quote directly on my studio wall, as something I strive for in my own painting and something I say to my own students in terms of technical advice.  A practical piece of advice was from artist CBE Yinka Shonibare, who told me to get your work out there. No one will see it if you don’t put it out there. Make your own DIY shows if no one wants to show you and don’t expect opportunities to fall into your lap.
 
What jobs have you done, other than being an artist?
Dairy factory
Runner for BBC
Retail
Front of House
Community worker