I paint outside where I find my authentic response to the surrounding landscape. Often my paintings are not grand vistas, but the close and immediate textures of bark and branch, of grass and roots. Close observation can reveal worlds within worlds. After the changing light and temperatures of painting outside, I love the contrast of working back inside at a still life painting, appreciating that the objects stay constant! My enjoyment of graphic design goes into full swing when I’m facing a Clarice Cliff teapot or an ornate dish of fruit and I paint my energy into these inanimate objects.
When I paint, I am building up textures with oil, pastel, ink and sometimes collage. I vary the size of board I work on so that my eye does not become complacent. I vary my subject matter so that I challenge what I think I know.This marvellous, elusive act of creating a painting seems to be about questioning what I think I know and understand and finding a new language with which to speak to others.
