Working Practice
Rock Pool
I explore the memory of a beach in Oregon through written word and painted image.
I look out of the window onto the long wild beach of the Oregon coast. In the half light, fog light of early morning, people are walking with purpose towards the coned volcanic plug which rises from the sea. The sea ebbs back marked by the banded dark of the sand . The people - solitary, in pairs or groups walk in early morning still-waking-up silence. I am drawn to join their directional pull. The people are here to see the rock pools left by the ebbing tide. At the base of the grey plug of rock, its jagged skin resistant to the sea’s insistent smoothing, is a pool of such rich colour alien form swirling squishing prickly deadly beauty. A gem at the foot of a dark brooding presence. A gift from a god. A timed exhibit, the best of, just for a moment before it’s covered by the grey plate of the sea surface where earth stops and air begins.
Together Apart
Physical engagement is essential to my work, not only in its making, but in the role of body as site of perception. I value the embodied memory of ‘the felt’ and use it alongside the imagined as a source for my work.
Falling Out
I create compositions with reference to Old Masters, and life drawing continues to inform my work.
Night Bus
Inspired partly by Samantha Harvey’s novel Orbital, I created a painting based on my experience of travelling through London on the night bus. Magical and trippy, I explore it in the brilliant colours of oil paint and oil pastel.
“In time we come to see that not only are we on the sidelines of the universe but that it’s a universe of sidelines, and there is no centre, just a giddy mass of waltzing things…” Orbital by Samantha Harvey
The board was collaged into an irregularly shaped support. The composition was worked out from small pencil sketches made on the bus, and from gouache studio studies.
Studies for the Night Bus in gouache and pencil drawing
Panels attached to board to extend the support beyond the rectangle
Etching and Aquatint
The tonal gradations available in aquatint and etching enable a clarity in composition and shape making, which I can then apply in my paintings.
