About the Artist
Biography
I am an artist printmaker based in Edinburgh, Scotland. My career as an artist has taken a non-traditional route. Although highly creative as a child growing up in a multicultural family between Germany and England, my formal academic education has been in the sciences. I have honed my artistic skills and creative vision through life drawing classes, community printshops and workshops with internationally leading artists and master printers. I have travelled extensively and called many countries and places home, and this experience of living between cultures has a strong influence on my work. I have exhibited nationally in curated gallery shows in London, Edinburgh and across the UK, including as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival programme, and have won regional awards for my work. I am a member of Edinburgh Printmakers where I create my stone lithographs, while my relief prints are printed in my home studio in the heart of Edinburgh. I am a member of two Scotland-based artist collectives, Printmakers of Scotland and Neuk Collective.
My pronouns are he/they.
About my work
My work explores identity, the human experience and the ways in which we relate to each other. I am especially drawn to the spaces we inhabit between multiple lived realities, and how we resolve dual identities to present a curated version of ourselves. Much of my recent work has focussed on an exploration of masks and the tension between our inner self and the idealised version of ourselves that we project to the world. My work is informed by my lived experience as a queer nonbinary neurodivergent person with a multi-national heritage and upbringing. I primarily work in relief printing (woodcut and mokuhanga) and lithography (using stone and wood as substrates).
My work strives to incite reflection on our shared humanity and joint origin in nature through the exploration of natural materials, textures and pigments. I am particularly drawn to pigments like rust and coal that undergo transformations and exist in multiple states, representing the multiple identities that coexist within us. Similarly, one of the reasons I am drawn to printmaking is the transformation that the image undergoes from the physical three-dimensional image I work into wood or stone, which is translated into a visual two-dimensional artwork on paper through the printing process. This moment of transformation from the tactile to the visual is always just beyond my reach as the artist creator. I can neither see nor feel that moment, and I find in this a beautiful symmetry with the ways in which our lives and experiences transform us in ways that are often outside our control.
I count Tracey Emin, Oswaldo Guayasamín, Claude Cahun, Bridget Riley, Evelyne Axell and Matsubara Naoko among my influences.
What’s in a name?
Why do I print under the studio name Caddis Prints? As I was setting myself up as a professional artist and establishing my studio I felt a strong affinity with the aquatic larvae of the caddis fly, which collect seemingly ordinary rocks, twigs and detritus and transform them into beautiful and delicate sanctuaries encasing their fragile bodies. Eventually, caddis fly larvae metamorphose to spread their wings and inhabit a new, bright world as aerial beings. Briefly splendidly beautiful, the caddis fly carries with it the history of its own personal transformation and the materials and experiences that shaped its journey through another world. Similarly to the caddis fly, my work takes everyday human experiences and natural materials, which through my hands and the printing process undergo a metamorphosis from a tactile state of being into visual artworks that inhabit the world of light and colour. Through my process and materials, I strive for my work to incite us to pause and reflect on themes of transformation and the coexistence of multiple lived realities.
Gallery shows
Summer Salon, Detail Gallery, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh (2024)
Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers: Small But Mighty, Bankside Gallery, London (2024)
Edinburgh Printmakers Members Show, Edinburgh (2024)