I have been fascinated by the many forms that angels have undertaken since I was a child. The idea of them being portrayed as humans with wings seemed obvious enough to me, and yet I knew there was something far more profound to be had by this most sacred and prestigious icon that has traveled through history alongside us; its definition as ever changing as we are.

Once again, it was the aura within that captivated me. I adored the traditional representation that angels had been portrayed as by the old masters; painted and sculpted with such extreme idealizations based on the human form, and yet, it seemed awry to me that we should depict them in our own form.

Through my research during the course of my Bachelors and my Masters I found myself duly noting my ignorance to this subject, and suddenly realized how much deeper its river ran. The stories of the Fallen angels and the Nephilim intrigued me; the concepts of them appearing as smells, lights or wheels of fire only added to my intrigue.

After several years I realized that I wished to try and make a justifiable epitaph to the romance and sentimentalism that we associate with them, and through it to try and recapture the sacred aura of how they may have existed in our minds eye. I looked closely at the Russian icons, the beautiful use of gold leaf on the halos, and especially the notorious stained glass window. Once again the memory concept that so captivates me came into play.

I started using the technological layering technique that I began on my Bachelors to combine photographs that I had taken of stained glass windows with original paintings; especially abstracts, in order to inject the old with the new, to give the aged sacredness its own contemporary energy through the colour flow and pattern within my original work.

This continues to grow and evolve, often in series, and works well printed in Giclee format.

Because I always wish my art to continue its path, I am currently exploring overlaying an abstract with a classical oil painted image of an angel in order to complete the full circle back to the finite fine art original. It is of great importance to me that I retain the fine art element of my work even where technology is involved because to use one’s own manual skills and imagination together is the ultimate challenge for any artist.