Artists Notes

Works From Memory are either relating to specific places or a feeling of that place. The balancing of the “abstract” and the “figurative” has been a driving factor in my work and is an on going pursuit.

Portrait paintings have come to be done as a result of grief and wanting to feel that Being back in my life.

The pure necessity of dealing with the technicalities of “putting the person on the canvas” being a nerve-racking but also absorbing experience.

The layering of the marks and the movement between having a likeness then just losing that likeness with one mark then bringing things back again is a true challenge.

Still Life has been a very good grounding factor - to “keep the eye in” when other ideas are not forming or able to be “coped with” at that time.

Etching is a most wonderful process, it can utilise fine linear elements, tonal blocks and expressive painterly marks all on the same plate.

The medium is a great leveller, as certain processes need to be adhered to. Transcribing imagery from paintings to print and vice versa has been hugely beneficial in creating new ideas and working out problems within the same subject matter.

Figure Drawings. For me the human figure is the ultimate challenging subject matter, I carried on from the intensive figure work I did as a student because I found working from the figure a discipline for drawing skills, a chance to develop hand/eye coordination as well as a grounding for other work

I find the shutting off of rational thought enables me to really look, it might work out or not - a risk of course. When really looking there is a sense of being “true” in dealing with form, analytical construction, connecting with the pose and the sense of the person posing.

Student Figure Work. Being a student was an enriching experience, I went in every day utilising the space and time. There was a “life room” with a model every day and evening, one could just go in and work for a day or a week. I would go in most evenings to draw as well as working on some large paintings from the figure alongside other ideas which I would work on in my “space” at the college