painter

I am a messy-hands equal happy kind of person.  I love nothing better than knowing I’ve had a good hour if paint is embedded under my fingernails, splashed round the walls, (including all over my wheelchair), or I am decorated up to my elbows!  For many years, charcoal and quink ink were my go-to materials.  One of my favourite pieces to make was a drawing of 6ft clam shells using quink and a willow stick.  I remember my elation at selling it ( I think it got bought up by a dentist practice in Hampshire!)  These days I try to get more colour into my life, so if I’m just needing to play or to loosen up, gouache is probably what I currently reach for:  I’ve been enjoying smooshing (yes, that’s a technical term!) and mark-making with my old disabled parking badge and a water-spray bottle – especially in my current favourite sketchbook which has an unusual (challenging) panoramic aspect.  But that’s just to warm myself up and get in the ‘flow’.  I spend a lot of time ‘throwing paint around’, normally on a large scale, at boards or canvasses.  These often become abstract expressionist pieces which relate to the word, poem or prayer I wrote on the surface before I began painting.

I am currently experimenting with ways of merging and combining photography, painting, printing and poetry onto/into a single surface/image – using physical techniques rather than solely through the medium of digital collage. Using many layers of paint over canvases covered in collage, gesso or texture paste, my paintings emerge in fits and starts, since I am utterly dependent on my variable levels of physical energy.  Painting is vital to my mental, emotional and spiritual health.  Each canvas or board is a direct, if cumulative, expression of feelings that arise when I ‘paint’ using strong colours (often influenced by seasonal tones), a water sprayer and unorthodox, ’found’ utensils, that might include sticks and stones, cheese graters and plastering tools.  Each painting emerges from an initial word, poem or prayer (inscribed on the base layer) that informs the work, so that the final image resolves itself as a counterintuitive visual poem that rewards long-looking.