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There are three main reasons why I need funding as an artist: assistance with my studio rent; to help source particular materials; to contribute to the production of a catalogue for my solo show in 2012.

The Golden Fleece Award would significantly assist in the payment of my studio rent at Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, where I am currently a member. The benefits of having a studio in a professional peer led environment are enormous. I believe that my practice functions to its full capacity in this organization. In 2012 and 2013 I have a solo show and a number of group shows arranged, and funding towards a studio would help to facilitate these plans and secure a proficient time management strategy. The nature of my work is remarkably time consuming, requiring a great deal of studio time. Both the production of work and the planning/researching of work are equally demanding. It is therefore crucial to be able to concentrate intently while on the other hand remaining in a free and loose mode. Being able to afford a studio at Temple Bar would alleviate worries and enable the creative process to remain holistic.

The second reason I need funding is to help expand the possibilities of presentation. My creative process is activated on many levels by the materials I use. For example, each of my paintings is made on a particular found paper, and the paper that I source generates new and exciting ideas for me. Take for instance my painting 'Section': the subject and title of this piece would certainly not have been generated without the industrial stamps that were already on it when found. The most ambitious next step for my practice would be to broaden the attention to the display. To this end, I plan to use antique frames for my paintings in my next solo show. Ornate antique frames would set out unforeseen possibilities for new work. But they can be costly and take time to source, and I would be delighted to be in a financial position to secure a large-scale gilt antique frame.

Finally, during 2012 I will be working with two art writers to prepare a critical catalogue to accompany my upcoming solo show, and funding would also contribute to this.

My practice is conceived through an interest in an autonomous reality. Processes of interpretation and the functions of hermetic symbols are used to serve the imagination as harbingers to the world I create. The curious vignettes are exquisitely compact and delicate, pencil work is persuaded and guided in an absurd mercurial twist. The viewer is invited to coerce and pursue these optic inflections, questioning a propensity to grasp and draw associations between impressions of the disarranged and the deranged.

Formal historic drawing styles are deliberately adopted and transformed. The spindly craftsmanship becomes organic, out of control, smothering around and through their environments, pushing the luxurious into a flurry of pathological deliquescence. Leaving a residue of resonances and suggestions with a quick drama of possibility and impossibility.

Saturated with a charged opulence these pieces propose a world where gravity is ignored and distance collapses time becomes suspended, accosted to a space of personal logic. The drawings are generally small in scale, closer inspection reveals intensely dense areas of detail, a constructed seamlessness where the tacit knowledge of subject and skill are conceptually equal. Colonial imagery, religious symbols, Victorian dandies and iconic suggestions of imperial legacies are used as symbols of power and time. These psychological and poetic motifs are altered, disrupting hierarchies and forming a conscious waking dream.