PAINTINGS
As a textile artist I felt free to use the dye in a very expressive and abstract way. But I wanted to have more choices in my work than is really possible with dye on cloth, so I now work much more with oil paint and acrylic paint. It has been challenging for me to translate that freedom into paint, and I have had to re-learn how to use paint in a traditional way before I felt free enough to experiment. So my paintings now range from initial studies with focus on looking and learning to much looser interpretations. I need to do both and I enjoy doing both. Landscape, horses, people and the abstract shapes I see around and in them are my favourite subjects.
ABSTRACTIONS
Below are some little pieces I have done recently from imagination. Perhaps they are indirectly from things I have seen or experienced in combination with the sugar rush I get when handling paint and its texture. I love to work from imagination or more accurately from letting my body tell me what to do.These are all acrylic paint on card. Some are available in the shop.
This is a series of large paintings made in 2018 for my exhibition “A Green Thought”. I became fascinated by the details of the undergrowth, and the Plum Tree ones are of a tree overhanging my own garden wall. I tried to detach myself from the overall impression by painting in small grids which became abstract studies of shape and colour. In this way I managed to retain the texture and the sense of light which might otherwise have escaped me.
FLANDERS MOSS NEAR STIRLING
A series of small pieces in oil of the Flanders Moss area near to Stirling. This was Christmas Eve 2018, and as far as I could see the land was covered with frost. The paintings are a tribute to Charlie Carrick and his land. Charlie had died a few months previously after many years’ tenure of this beautiful farm.
The little pieces below are all an interpretation of the Bowland Forest, Lancashire, where I was working as a hostel warden in 2018 for a few days. The shapes of the hills and trees and enclosures in this ancient place are stirringly beautiful. I reworked the pencil sketches made each day into oil sketches, trying to distil the shapes and colours as simply as I could.
