Understanding my work
I see my work as a way to capture a moment in time or capture a fleeting moment of natural beauty in a world that is otherwise full of uncertainty and unimaginable darkness. I would like to encourage others to think about the environment and their impact on it, including how we treat all other living beings. My goal as an artist is to encourage conversation about looking beyond the surface and see the damaging consequences that are happening in the world and to our planet beyond the point of return, the relentless darkness that we hear about daily and the damage to nature and mankind is madness. There seems to be no balance.
Working predominantly with oil paint, I also like to use oil sticks and experiment with acrylics. I have a love affair with high quality cotton rag papers but equally love painting on Belgium linens. Big scale canvases are my signature, I am messy and like to use big expressive gestural strokes and a variety of oversized brushes to create interesting and varied marks. My language of painting is greatly influenced by my state of mind, I would say it is an emotionally intense style.
I would have to say I am influenced by nineteenth-century impressionist painters, particularly the development of unique style, and expressing emotional and psychological responses to the world through bold colours and expressive, often symbolic imagery of Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Georges Seura sand so many more, I just love the old masters especially Monet.
I am definitely in awe of the women artists behind the abstract Impressionism movement in the 1950’s, Joan Mitchell, Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler and Elaine de Kooning.
They were a powerful force adopting a career in painting over marriage and motherhood. They really forged the way for women being taken seriously in the art world. Painting is a life long journey and the more I learn the more I realise what I have to learn. As Rothko said “Painting is easy when you don’t know how, it’s hard when you do”.
