As a small child I felt my world (my grandmother's house) to be a feast for observation, exploration and insights. The fabric of that small domestic space was as the fabric of the universe to me. My own exploration and discovery of intimate elements, particles, atoms and surfaces surrounding and wrapping me. Brass and copper objects from the shipyard, cinders and ashes, iron pokers, rusty tools, flames and heat from burning coals.

Shimmying  dust clouds captured in shafts of flared sunlight, hypnotic fractal patterns trapped in resinous layers of linoleum, bits of rugs piled on top of each other, clouds of steam from pans, and then rivers of condensing vapour on cold glass window panes. Also a good support for drawings, if a bit fleeting in nature.

All this I experienced on a daily basis for the first seven years of my life and I felt a rich intimacy and connection to this ‘cosmic’,  domestic, big bang encounter and entanglement with this world.

Since then I have continued my curiosity concerning Space, Matter, Time, Materials and our connection with Stuff.

I had the Stardust pictures and other works in a show at the De Rollo gallery, Dundas Street Edinburgh, which was part of the science festival which is held in the city every two years and had very positive responses from the science community.

The works themselves are on paper and are quite small, between 6 and 9 inches square. I usually work on a much larger scale and this became a conscious challenge to try and harness my concerns within a concentrated framework.

A process which took a long time to reach points of resolution, the works started as thin pieces of Fabriano water colour paper. And as pigments, lash, scrape and strokes were applied, a surface and substance evolved, until some of the pieces were up to half an inch thick.

I worked the pigments, surface and energy until I felt that hard fought and wrought gesture could do no more and I could reasonably claim a state of matter that mattered.

The more was lost before it was gained, made solid by mutual force and destroyed again until elements appeared. Eventually coming together as layers of paint reaching a point, magnetised and dragged with urgent dash until they seemed to claim a connection with the cosmic dust pulled and fused by time and gravity.