For the Love of Flowers
I love flowers for their colour, shape and movement, be they wild or cultivated. They are vital for all sorts of reasons and one of the most important for us humans is sensory; through colour, shape, scent and movement. Walking through a wildflower meadow on a sunny day, for instance, gives a rush of impressions and emotions, happiness and delight foremost. Think too of those peripheral glimpses of a field of poppies while out walking in the countryside, or a carpet of sea pinks while on a coastal walk. I try to convey this through semi abstract shapes, merging layers of high colour married with fleeting, half glimpsed background flowers and swirling paint fields to convey their constant movement. The paintings can start sometimes to become almost sensory; one can almost smell their scent carried on the breeze. I then fill this emotional colour field with pockets of more detailed flowers. A recent piece of work was a large scabious bee's eye view of its favoured flower, imagining how it 'sees' the blue field scabious as it prospects for its pollen.
My paintings are of various sizes. I paint predominantly in watercolour plus other media such as Caran d'Ache Neocolour II water soluble crayons, FM acrylic inks, pigment shavings, water soluble graphite, soapy water to disperse the paint and create organic free flowing shapes, and salt to 'contract' the paint fields. This will be complemented from time to time with collage, and additional layers of paint over a fixed layer.
I have had giclee prints made of some of the works and these are always a limited run.
