Looking through the catalogue of work that I have made this year I notice that I have done more watercolour paintings than anything else.
Painting is something I enjoy. If the weather is good I will take paints and paper and walk to a place outside; if it is raining, I’ll paint in the studio, from memory.
Painting gives me two things: an exploration of mark making and materials – in this case paint and paper; and it gives me the opportunity to consider something that is becoming increasingly important when I make work – that ambiguous space between an experience and how I may evoke it, either immediately or later. These ideas feed each other as I paint.
A painting comes from my manipulation of materials to exploit their specific properties. How does paint move around paper? What tools should I use to move it around? What marks can I make? How much water should I use? It is a process that is largely intuitive and each time I squeeze paint onto a palette and pick up a paint brush something different happens. What I discover whilst working with these materials feeds the expression of the image that appears on the paper.
These paintings were made in the studio and come from my memory. I find I am increasingly making work from the memory of an experience: the remembered sensation of seeing, of hearing, of touching that constitutes a moment of being in the world. These paintings explore that space between the original experience and how I might evoke it here and now.
I have spoken before about artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham and her idea of ‘outer sensing and inner seeing’. These paintings are an expression of contemplation and imagination and come from an amalgam of experiences within me: of space, of light, of time, of rhythm. They are the result of the interaction between my inner perceptions, my materials and my hands.
These paintings are done on half a sheet (approx. 56×38 cm) Bockingford, 300gm, not, watercolour paper.
