As a fine artist, drawing is a constant in my practice. Drawing is a way of thinking – visually and out loud. It is a process of travelling into the unknown – making new tracks, sometimes with the maps of previous drawings as a guide, sometimes into a place as yet unvisited.

The image above, At Table, was selected by the National Gallery Young Producers for inclusion in their Degazine (2020), a publication of works submitted in response to Degas’ painting ‘Helen Rouart in her father’s study’. This is a drawing about being a parent and being a child – because for much of life many of us are both, even years into adulthood. As with the Degas painting, the table is another character in the drawing and a surface that both divides and connects the figures. Whether playing or arguing, both figures are a little like animals, with the suggestion of a tail on each as, when we are playful or in disagreement we are freed of our polite human disguise. I don’t know if the child is my younger self or my daughter’s, and whether the adult is my father or me. I am not an ‘emerging’ artist, but perhaps a ‘re-emerging’ one and now, as I step into another phase of life, a parent, but no longer someone’s child, I feel a little like my younger self, filled with a sense of freedom and possibility.