Artist Statement
The conjunction of order and chance that underpins human experience is the stimulus for my painting.
The conjunction of order and chance that underpins human experience is the stimulus for my painting.
This edgy dynamic is also the pivot for my choice of watercolour as preferred medium for its speed of drying and quirky sensitivity to weather conditions and mood. However, because transparent watercolour will not cover and hide, the skill to work with it requites both accuracy and spontaneity and can only evolve, like life – serially.
Watercolour cannot be bullied forced or pushed in to place without losing something of the intrinsic glory of its own nature and so, by combining research and play, I try to anticipate what water wants to do and work with it.
My aim is to be primed with skills that I can ‘forget’ sufficiently to respond in the moment of discovery. Because that moment cannot be repeated and each mark is permanent, the process involves risk.
The counterbalance in dance and music and the geological drama of the Dorset coast and Iceland, where I exhibit and regularly teach, are underlying influences of my subject choice which ranges from landscape to life painting and the synaesthetic imagery of linked sensations. My aim is to savour and express the connection I feel with external elements. Whether this spark hits me or is generated by my attention, the brief synchronicity it creates can make the humblest everyday event feel awesome and worthy of celebration.
If my destination is the synthesis of idea and sensation in painting, then the journey for me is a wandering between studio and location and the realities of the outer and inner ’screens’ of vision.
Each image, good-looking or bad, is a testament to its moment of creation and I now view painting less in terms of finite pieces, more as a continuing life process.