I am a nineteen year old art student from Richmond upon Thames College. I have always been drawn to the aesthetics of my surroundings. Art, for me, is an enriching process; creating art is a means through which I can connect with the world around me. Through my artwork I feel able to convey ideas in a way words cannot and so a finished painting gives me a huge sense of fulfilment.

I am able to draw realistically in fine detail and can also produce art work of an abstract and expressionistic style in a variety of media. Increasingly, I have become materials-led, producing abstract pieces of work where things happen of their own accord; the paintings evolve in stages based on my immediate response to the incidental details and patterns that emerge through different methods of paint application. This idea is most prominent in my very textural paintings of Dungeness from my site-specific project; I was fascinated by exploring painting from memory alone with the idea of capturing a dream-like vision of the haunting coastal landscape. To do this I imagined certain aspects of the village and transformed these into paint, for example, my gestures of adding, dragging and removing paint imitate the natural world, the tidal ebb and flow, the movement of the strong wind.

I very much enjoy the contextual side and have an A-level in History of Art. Artists who inspire me include Paul Klee, Francis Bacon, Mark Rothko and Wassily Kandinsky. I am particularly engaged by their psychological intensity: Klee's ability to suggest a poetic sense of other worlds through abstraction, Bacon's emotionally raw imagery, Rothko's impulsive vocabulary of colour and Kandinsky's association with synaesthesia. I am most influenced by Whistler's Nocturne series, his ability to capture a fleeting moment through memory alone is stunning. Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Fallen Rocket is my favourite and the reason I started to paint.

Other interests and factors that always inspire my work include literature, poetry, theatre, music, psychology and philosophy.

So far on my foundation year I have been focussed on developing my use of expressionistic colour, surface texture and harmonious composition. My current project 'the watched and the watchers' is a lot darker, far more thought-provoking in terms of its meaning. I now intend to merge figurative aspects with my abstract compositions.

I am extremely keen to broaden my knowledge of the medium and would make a diligent and versatile member of your class.