Form is not predetermined in my practice. I do not begin with a decision to make a work realistic, abstract, painterly or graphic. The degree of representation emerges from what the work needs to hold.
When a specific image carries historical, social or spatial meaning, recognisability becomes necessary. In other works, representation may begin to restrict states that are less stable—perception, memory, bodily experience, tension or forms of life that cannot be fully contained by a fixed image. In those cases, the image is reduced, displaced or allowed to become less determinate.
Material is part of this decision rather than a neutral vehicle. Watercolour allows water, absorption, timing and accident to participate in the formation of the image. Oil painting introduces weight, resistance, layering and material density. Printmaking brings translation, repetition, compression, reversal and the physical act of cutting into the work.
These are not separate stylistic identities. They are different material and visual conditions through which a work can become what it needs to be.