The exhibition this year is my response in colour and texture to the landscape I enjoy from my journeys, close to home or further afield.
I am particularly inspired by big skies and huge mountains loving to capture their gradients and scale taking the viewers eye into the beyond. I hope to inspire both atmosphere and imagination. I have also done some paintings celebrating the past of old and derelict buildings and boats.
I look to slightly abstract my work by placing more emphasis on interesting textures and lines that create both space, structure, and distance.
I collect my ideas when out on walks both locally and when travelling. I always have my sketch book with me, take photos frequently and think of words to best describe - the “live nature” of where I am.
Having collected my information, back at the studio, I then will create many collage and textural pieces from wallpapers and little painted study pieces which are then torn. I also print in relief or collect highly textural pieces such a netting or corrugated card. I will also look for those found pieces that suit the theme I am building in terms of colour or maybe completely random and will add an unusual hint or quirkiness to a painting.
Using graphite initially, I will do a limited amount of planning preferring to get “stuck in” on the basis that using acrylic I can change the bits that aren't working. My work then often takes on a life of its own! I aim to not recognise “mistakes” but rather look to incorporate them keeping my work spontaneous and free. In addition to acrylic and collage pieces I will often dribble and spray ink and use pastels (mostly metallic oil).
I love to work with strong bold colours and the blues from indigo to turquoise juxtaposed with the earth colours of burnt umber and raw sienna are my frequent “go to” palette. The use of these bold colours allows me to highlight the magnitude and magnificence of big bold skies and mountains. I also use a lot of black and white both mixed into and alongside these colours to emphasize dark against light to provide exaggerated tone and form. I also love a bit of metallic!
Within a piece of work, I rely upon mixed media to give me both hard and soft fluid edges for example ink sprayed over painted, structured lines and torn edges provide an interesting contrast that I aim to work into to create the image I am after. Depending on the theme of the painting I will adapt the energy of my brushstrokes from sweeping spontaneous marks for mountains to smaller and more precise marks for details in buildings. As I use abstraction in my paintings, I look to stylise parts in response to my love of design and shape.
In my cityscapes and harbours, I work the same techniques but look to be slightly more specific in terms of structure and detail. In these works, I have included newspaper cuttings and text.
I enjoy painting big and bold and increasingly I am working on large deep edge boxed canvases. The biggest to date has been over a metre and a half wide. The studio space allows me to work on this scale freely without interruption. I have the added pleasure that comes from the fact that my studio was part of a former Witney blankets factory and I am immediately next to the old mill pool where the blankets were washed in days gone by. Despite its industrial past, the mill pool and its surrounds are now teeming with wildlife and it is a joy to be part of that.
I have always painted throughout my life and as a child I was very much encouraged by my Mother (an artist herself based in North Yorkshire). Having pursued a career in retail, I was a millinery buyer for Harrods, and since my children have grown up, I have become a full-time artist and I now teach art and paint.