about me
My early life was, thanks to my father, very academic. It was also, thanks to my Italian mother, vibrant and visual. These two sides to my understanding of the world are still very much with me; I have a Physics degree and a PhD from Imperial College in London, and I have drawn and painted from the heart all my life.
A serious interest in art began when I was a student. The physics department at Imperial College is across the street from the Royal College of Art and a stones throw from the V&A and the Serpentine Gallery. Imperial was a science and engineering college when I was there, and so these juxtapositions were very fortunate for me. During my undergraduate years I was treated to wonderful lunchtime art history and poetry lectures, and had all of the London art galleries to explore.
I am drawn to life’s autonomous goings on - the many complicated things that we take for granted, like our immune system, the weather, or a bird filled woodland. These ‘goings on’ all have aspects in common, in that they are both complex and self organising. I am thinking, for example ofthe body’s ability to build a molecule shaped exactly, to enable it to remove a pathogen; or the development of a storm, as it travels across oceans from its origins on the other side of the planet; or the sustainability of a vibrant and diverse ecosystem built by the trees within a forest. All these systems have the ability to develop and sustain themselves, respond to external forces and change if need be, all without script or instruction.
So within my painting practice, I delve into these complex spaces and try with colour and pattern to express their complexity, flexibility and robustness. And yet there is always an underlying fragility for such complex systems. That same fragility that allows them to be flexible and robust, also enables the ultimate possibility of destructive change or indeed death.
My painted surfaces are ordered through the repetition of simple motifs, but the order is fractured. Each canvas gives the viewer just a glimpse of some largerwhole. But just where we are, in that square glimpse, something new and vigorous is occurring. The outcome is not settled once and for all; there are routes away from where we are. But just for now, the glimpse is of a new and viable reality.
At various stages in my life I have attended courses in drawing, painting and art history, most notably at Winchester School of Art, Southampton University, the Tower arts Centre in Winchester, and at the Juno Studio in Braishfield, in Hampshire. I have been a full time painter and exhibitor for the last fifteen years.
The artists whose work I go back to time and again for ideas and support, are Ian McKeever, Bridget Riley, Ian Davenport, Albert Irvin, John Hoyland, and Richard Diebenkorn.
I have work in the following places
Microsoft eScience Research, Los Angeles
Somers Cancer Research Building, Southampton General Hospital
BioSciences Department, University of Cardiff
Department of Engineering, Bristol University
recent exhibitions
Explorers Against Extinction Exhibition, OXO Gallery, Tower Wharf, South Bank, London 17 Nov - 28 Nov 2021
Invited Work displayed at COP26 Oct 31 - 12 Nov 2021
Speaker, World Environment Day, Tebbs Gallery, online June 2021
‘In the Current Climate‘ Solo Exhibition at SpudWorks Gallery, Sway, Hampshire SO41 6BA, Jan/Feb 2020
'Abstract 3'‘ Gallery 25N New York 2017
More is Everything ‘ Solo Exhibition at the Zari Gallery, Bloomsbury, London WIT 3EJ, July 2016
‘Life is Complicated, and Complex ‘ Solo Exhibition at the Link Gallery, University of Winchester, March 2016
'Engaging with Complexity' Exhibition of my paintings alongside student computer generated images ; Level 4 Gallery, Hartley Library, Southampton University 2015.
Art@ICSS, Solo Exhibition, Institute for Complex Systems Simulation, Southampton University 2013/2014
Artists Interpretations, works by Tessa Coe: Science@Microsoft - the Fourth Paradigm, CC 2012
'Everyday Miracles' Ashcroft Arts Centre, Fareham 2011
Exhibition in aid of 'Red and White Appeal' Braishfield, 2010
'Patterns of Significance' Solo Exhibition, Biosciences Department, Cardiff University, 2009
'Triple Vision' Brockenhurst Gallery, 2008
'Common Origins' Lauderdale House Gallery, Highgate Hill, London, 2007
Fossil Poetry, Solo exhibition at the Corn Exchange, Newbury, 2006
The Art of Pattern, Southampton Art Gallery, 2006
Art Intersect Science, Lucid Gallery, San Francisco, 2005
Neville Fine Art, 2005