An Artist's Insights in to her Themes and Sources For Painting

'After the Deluge, the Light Rose Over the Mountains,' acrylic on canvas, 70 x 50 cm

This is today's Facebook post:

TWO of my favourite starting points for my paintings are mountains and waterfalls/rivers. I like to use them to explore paint and an idea of space, in particular, to give a sense of the physical space we feel in landscape which is always so different wherever we go. This has fascinated me since I was a child and it took me a while to realise that the actual sensation of space and 'being' in the land is at the root of my abstract-figurative compositions. As a child I used to imagine myself dancing through landscapes and this is what I like to do with paint!
Both of these, from this year, are about being in landscape and feeling the elements and its changing nature, in this case mountains and flooding (which we have had a lot of in the UK), and they are paintings of hope because in the end the light comes through. They are also about the presence of landscape as a being in itself.

I find it really useful to keep thinking about my core values and themes, even if they keep changing, as they always do either step by step or through a sudden insight brought about by trying out a different process.

I would add to this that my work tends to have several areas of focus as I cast out my net to explore the elements I'm interested in. This sense of space is one of the things that has always enthralled me because my earliest memories are of journeys with my parents, often by car, as we travelled to visit relatives in Scotland or Cornwall. These tended to be quite long journeys and I sat quietly feeling the different 'vibes' that came from the land. 

'Three Escape the Deluge,' acrylic and ink on canvas, 70 x 50 cm

I still imagine myself dancing through landscapes and landscape memories. I love that feeling of my own small size in relation to epic landscapes with huge mountain vistas, or being on very flat, open landscape where there is a certain factor of vulnerability. But the theme has widened recently to include the thoughts of environmental concerns, climate change and the eternal precarious aspect of being a human being.

I like to think that my use of paint - bold brush strokes, forms that suddenly appear, an emotional reaction to the paint - are all part of this dance and that I also echo Nature.

To be continued.