When I paint or draw, I am trying to catch at and communicate experiences of being in and moving through a landscape. These experiences are rooted in all the senses and understood as sensations in the body through skin, breath, nose, feet –  and, of course, the eyes.  Less interested in the literal representation of specific places, the works are a sense of these visceral journeys and responses to weather, light and time of year. Most often they are UK based –  Hertfordshire, Cornwall, Yorkshire, East Anglia and the Isle of Wight feature.  One painting referenced 5 hours watching light change on a mountain top in Sri Lanka.

I love it when a viewer encountering a painting forms their own relationship with it. When I am ready to show paintings, what they mean to me and the story behind making them is far less important than the viewers’ experience. I think the truth of a painting is where what I intend and what the viewer sees intersect – like a Venn diagram.

Running, walking, journeying, adventuring and exploring are essential to making paintings. If I don’t do this – then it is as though a spring has run dry and the work becomes tighter, clunkier and more laboured.  Long distance running in particular is fuel for the non-sight senses. After mile 8 one crosses over into a different space – a space experience through skin and air, the beat of feet and breathing.  I recently trained for and then ran a half marathon as a means to maintain this active practice of discovery. The next half marathon will be in the South Downs in June. It sounds hilly and exciting.

 

Paintings from top:

Wild Woman II, 150 x 110, ink and gesso on birch ply with aluminium subframe, framed white lime waxed wood £2300 (2nd hang at The Other Art Fair)

Pause, 2018, 154 x 100 x 5.5cm, ink and gesso on marine ply, framed white lime waxed wood, £2300

Wild Woman I, 150 x 110, ink and gesso on birch ply with aluminium subframe, framed white lime waxed wood £2300 (2nd hang at The Other Art Fair)

Breathe III, 2018 – is the third in a trio of vertical landscapes which will be launched in the first hang at  The Other Art Fair, 22 – 25th March on stand 63.