About Me

I am a UK artist/writer, who roams about a bit. Hampshire > Salford > Norwich > Manchester > Whitby > Staithes > Newcastle, in a nutshell.

I have been colouring in texts and making collage/cut-up/blackout poetry for some time now, and mixing found photographs, mostly black and white, with words for a few years. I started playing around more with this sort of thing when I started university, and exhibited my first ‘blackout’ book in about 2009, somewhere around the time I was finishing up my MA in English Literature and Philosophy. I was attracted to the philosophy of art, existentialism, and phenomenology; these areas of interest sometimes manifest themselves in the little creatures I create, most prominently in cut-up and blackout poetry.

I thought it was time to dedicate a blog to just these cut-up and blackout style pieces. I’m hoping that some other people might like the look of them and want to give it a try themselves (fun – if you’re partial to geek recreation). Or, you can go and buy some of my stuff from Etsy and help a girl buy a sandwich and a six-pack.

One of the things I like about this sort of process, is how autonomous it is, and also how I can’t really accept any responsibility in terms of complete ownership/authorship. I have not taken the original photos, nor, in any literal sense, actually written the words down. All I do is make choices – something that I suck at in my real everyday life. These choices invariably include some kind of glue, an Exacto knife, and a box of paper things. I regularly deface (save/improve/destroy/reconstruct) unwanted books, and will always opt to cut up a text rather than see it go on a sad journey to a landfill. I’m also broke most of the time, so you know, you gotta use what you got!