Everyone has certain expectations of glass - how it should look and feel. I try to confound these expectations. I often take familiar objects from the domestic interior and transform them, making them bear the weight of intense emotional experience. I want the glass, literally and figuratively, to express otherness.

I began my training in glass in 1995 at Edinburgh College of Art, where I completed a degree and postgraduate diploma, and then continued to study at the Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. Throughout this period I produced sculptural and installation-based work of a deeply personal nature, exploring themes of memory and loss. I supported myself by working as an assistant to a number of prominent glass artists, including Keiko Mukaide, Richard Price and Richard Meitner. After graduating from the Rietveld Academie, I continued to make my own work in Amsterdam, exhibiting widely in the Netherlands, Germany, the UK and Ireland. The Ulster Museum, the National Glass Museum (Netherlands), and the Ernsting Stiftung Glass Museum (Germany) bought a number of my pieces for their collections of contemporary glass.

In May 2004, I returned from Amsterdam to Ireland. I now work from my studio at the Leitrim Sculpture Centre in Manorhamilton. Prompted by the total absence of hot glass facilities in this country, in 2006 I secured funding to build a fully equipped hot glass studio at the centre. This opened in June 2007, and is the only one of its kind in Ireland. I intend to develop this facility as a resource for professional glass artists, and a centre for learning through workshops, master classes and residencies.