Words, wire on paper (detail) | 70cm x 100cm | 2009

My fundamental interest is communication, how we express some inner something, the stuff inside of us. For a while I focused on writing because that’s what I know, because I am, to use a Joyce expression, ‘ABCED minded’. I made a number of works based on writing and literature.

In these 2008/9 works (three made of wire poked into paper and one drawing on paper) it was the structure of writing that I was thinking of; both its arrangement on a page (the grid, the colour) but also how written words operate and relate to each other. They are pictures of the way writing works.

I carry writing images in my mind: one of them is of words being hairy, in that they cannot be defined specifically but carry multiple meanings: ‘Meaning is a gathering web of insinuations’. Another feeling I have about writing is that it is inadequate. It works well for shopping lists but not for feelings, experiences and half-formulated thoughts.