Just keep following the heartlines on your hand

FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE

About

Based in Bungendore in the Southern Tablelands, NSW, I have been making contemporary mosaic art from around 2008. Since moving to Australia 20 years ago from the UK, I have mostly lived in rural areas. My work is often a response to how I experience the soft and simultaneously, harsh Australian landscape that is changing as a direct result of human activities.

Working in my shed, I use traditional mosaic techniques. The materials I’m drawn to are varied and include marble, rocks, smalti, vitreous glass, unglazed ceramic, shell and reclaimed porcelain. I’m always looking for dialogues between diverse combinations of materials and processes. Texture and surfaces, of all kinds, but especially those in the Australian environment, are vital to my practice.

My choice of materials and cutting and laying techniques is informed by a continuous search for different ways of conveying moments of juxtaposition. In both a material sense and its significance or connotation to an idea.

My recent work has explored the theme of transformations of ecological systems due to global warming. I have drawn inspiration from the flowing, interconnected layers of eco systems, and how changes or conflict in any one layer ripple throughout subsequent ones. In creating this work, I’ve been captivated by the processes of creating mosaic patterns through the interplay of texture, light and shadow that allude to the fragility of eco systems.

I am currently working on a series exploring the tensions between elements and ideas to do with change.

I have exhibited in Australia and the USA. I am a member of the Mosaic Association of Australian and New Zealand, the Society of American Mosaic Artists and the National Association for the Visual Arts.

Visual Arts Education

2012 – 2015
Several intensive workshops with Emma Biggs
West Dean College, UK
Including:
• Colour in Mosaics
• Design and Mosaics
• Mosaics and Texture
• Mosaics: The Principles of Making
• From Concept to Realisation: Making Mosaics
• Mosaic and Pattern: Meaning and Complexity

2015
Verdiano Marzi, Modern Expression
Chicago Mosaic School, USA

2016
Rachel Bremner, Ancient Techniques to Contemporary Art
Sturt, Mittagong, NSW

2014 – 2016
Various short drawing and painting courses,
Centre for Continuing Education
Australian National University, Canberra