My paintings are as much about how to paint as what to paint. They are mostly oil on canvas,
with a few combining other media and textures.
I have used oil for many years but in the earlier work have tended to apply the paint in thin glazes, blending the colours. This creates a transparency, with underlayers showing through.
Edges are soft and shadowy.
With the more recent paintings I have been experimenting by first doing an underpainting.
This is relatively opaque and could be in the same or contrasting colours to the top painting.
The top painting has been executed with a much thicker layer of paint applied with palette knife
as well as brushes.The underpainting will still show through in places, adding, I hope,
interest to the finished result.There is less possibility with this method of covering up mistakes,
but it is expressive and fun to do.
Several of the paintings have been inspired by my visit to the east coast of Scotland.
The light is clear and similar to Cornwall, as are some of the villages. The sun goes down
after 11 pm at that time of year which gives plenty of time for studying the landscape.
I hope to return and do more work based on the area.
I have also continued to do work on the hills of South Shropshire. It has been a very important locality throughout my adult life and many memories are contained within these paintings.
I am more interested in conveying atmosphere than recording a photographic accuracy.
This leads on to the abstract paintings and semi-abstract paintings.These are often intended to suggest a time of day or the weather rather than a particular place.The large painting ‘Sea Room’ evokes the wildness of the sea around the Scottish coast whereas the small painting ‘Evening Shadow’ suggests the heat of the evening in a French village.
At least that is what I have set out to do.
I have also been experimenting with collagraph prints, a form of relief printing where the plate is made with a wide variety of materials. One of the themes is ‘the black dress’ which has been a thread in my work for many years. The dress exists, but is now quite fragile. It is partly about my own life but also about the female dilemma of domestic ties and the lure of luxury and glamour.