Ije (eejay) artist-healer exploring metaphysical and material realities through a sensuous, nomadic arts practice fusing personal memory, embodied practice and material intervention. My creations are extensions of the rhythms of my body, active evolving sites of experimentation, fabrications of sensuous energetic memories.
A global majority artist, originally from Scotland, now living in the West Midlands, my sensuous practice draws on a lifetime of moving. Moving across the UK and beyond, exploring landscapes, from wild spaces of mountains and coastlines, to mining and farming communities to industrial towns and cities. Moving with energy, with colour; dancing to rhythms of time, moving amongst smooth spaces. Photographs/video/audio recordings capture and document, eventually transformed into energetic artworks of paintings, sculptures, installations and words, often incorporating found/repurposed, natural/manufactured materials.
In 2012 burnout, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, recurrent Shingles and post herpetic neuralgia significantly impacted on my life and career in the public sector. Leaving employment to heal, I began to do activities of long steady walking/slow running, being outdoors for many hours, freeing my mind, body and spirit. These activities often initiate a refrain of sensations, sound/colour/movement, gradually coalescing into physical and intensive making processes: sculpting, painting, exposing depth and opening pores like skin; using specific materials to manipulate surface; creating space, worlds within worlds to be explored, to get lost and found, these spaces I go when I’m journeying.
I am an artist: I am a writer, an explorer, a poet, painter and photographer, a creator and a healer. I am a sculptor, an adventurer, a walker and a runner, a performer, thinker and catalyst. I look towards, I look onto, I look through and on the face of things; I encounter, touch, feel, remember, imagine, and fabricate.
A prolific maker, creating territories across several lines of enquiry concurrently, I am predominantly self-taught, gaining an MA Fine Art (2016) and achieving my first large gallery solo exhibition 2020 as winner of The Chameleon Arts Prize 2019 (Surface Gallery, Nottingham, UK). I have artworks in 2 coprorate collections (UK/China) as well as in private homes in the UK, Ireland and Norway. I am an artist, Trustee, Ambassador and Advisory Board member with the UK charity Outside In.
Selected recent exhibitions: 2025 UNDOINGS Sussex Contemporary, Newhaven; PAINTING Fronteer Gallery, Sheffield
2024 RUGBY LITERARY FESTIVAL spoken word performance, Alexandra Arts Centre, Rugby; THE GRANGE FESTIVAL exhibition of 6 artists, The Grange, Hampshire; LEAMINGTON OPEN Leamington Spa Art Gallery, Leamington Spa; C.A.S.E. The Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry
2023 RUGBY OPEN EXHIBITION 2023 Rugby Art Gallery & Museum, Rugby (also 2015 + 2017 to 2022); ING DISCERNING EYE Mall Galleries, London