I have always worked creatively with a combination of found ephemera and self-generated imagery, originally (in pre-digital days) using the silkscreen process to bring these disparate elements together in a single composition. At college I used photocopies and acetates to expose images onto a screen and would compose the images in black and white before printing in colour. I never threw anything away, keeping all the cut offs and unused elements and creating in the process an ongoing collection of original graphic material, much of which has now mutated into digital form.

The long term intention of Catalog / Graphic Bloc is to document and visually research the content of the ‘graphic collection’ that underpins my working method. It is an attempt to continually appraise and challenge both content and creative process in my work and in so doing bring fresh ideas into my commercial practice.

There never has been any rigid structure to my collection of graphic source material – just an ever shifting series of piles of A3 or A4 images, photocopies, printouts, acetates, paper, drawings, notes and photographs, in drawers or on the floor, scanned, saved and resaved into desktop folders, locations memorized randomly by date last used or some other non specific logic. This research project began as an attempt to revisit and bring order to this material, but I came to realize that while there are identifiable themes and categories, ultimately I can’t pin it down to specifics, the collection is too big and it’s always evolving. The unordered piles are important, the randomness is important. I’m meant to look through lots of images on the way to finding what I want - and in that process I’ll usually find something else that I hadn’t considered.

If ‘Catalog’ is the process /method of investigation then ‘Graphic Bloc’ is the body or collection of graphic material. Through this project I have realized how central this collection is to my practice as an image maker. Graphic Bloc is / will become an ever-evolving visual ‘map’ of my work and ideas – a graphic autobiography which I will keep exploring and displaying. Catalog – the ongoing observation, appraisal, interpretation and use of raw material from the collection is fundamental to the development of my work now and in the future.