The artist Yves Klein called the flame ‘a living brush’. I use the sooty carbon trace left from a candle flame to make smoke drawings. To me this ephemeral material expresses the passage of time, memory, absence and our fragile and transient nature.

My recent works have taken a look at the sooty material itself, the element of carbon, often called ‘the backbone of life’. This was the starting point for a series of works called ‘Carbon Based Forms’. The geometric designs are drawn from the crease patterns that remain from unfolded origami.

I saw a parallel between carbon and origami, in both complexity of life or form comes from the simplicity of a small building block, an atom or a fold, repeated and evolving to create a vast number of different objects. Pattern and repetition are key elements of my work and connect to a previous series of drawings made with dozens of rollerball pens.

A background in ceramics is no doubt the reason why I’m drawn to using fire as a creative tool. I work with and enjoy the element of risk; total concentration is needed to make the drawings. Fire creates an irreversible transformation, there is no going back; images cannot be unburned. But as you can imagine, as in life, much does go up in smoke.

I was elected an Academician of the Royal West of England Academy in 2007 and selected for the Jerwood Drawing prize in 2005

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