Clothing can represent expression, storytelling, resistance, defiance and creativity. An artist who explores femininity and the uncomfortable nooks of life that intrigue me is Louise Bourgeois, especially her fabric works and how she addresses trauma through embroidery. I can feel the bleed and bruises in this work. Likewise, the autobiographical, candid artwork of Tracey Emin punches me with its raw narrative. An exciting younger painter, Flora Yukhnovich, turns figurative experience into abstract works that have a fleshy, sticky, organic quality and her references to film and photography connect with me, given my background in those industries. In contrast, but equally powerfully, I am drawn to the meditative rhythms and linear grids of Agnes Martin and the colour washes and mark-making of Helen Frankenthaler.

My painting process is that of patiently and delicately building up thin layers of oil paint on canvas, forms lying over forms, feeling nearer or further away in relation to one another. Past ages of paint disappear, saturate, and edges dissolve, or I will rub back to reveal the history that has been. I savour the handling of paint. The pulsating mark-making will then contrast with a rhythmic movement of washes of colour that stain or move across the plane. The paintings emerge. They need time. I am drawn to a vital physicality in the act of painting.