ABOUT ME
“It’s lovely to get lost wandering the leafy pathways of your imagination” John W.
I was lucky to grow up with a huge expanse of woodland behind our house. The woods were a place of great excitement and danger and my siblings and I had the freedom to explore and have adventures that are still vivid in my memory.
The reality of our world is so shocking and increasing so, that human nature opts for retreat. I’ve always found a secluded wood a place of escape. Step into a wooded area, find yourself alone. A change in temperature and light, the senses become alive everything feels different. Your alone but there is movement everywhere, you feel sharpened and awake. Trees take on human characteristics, they merge into one another and then suddenly you are struck by the strangeness of an oak amid a sea of fir trees.
Silver birches have become a bit like a re-occurring dream, that I never get to the end of. It is a theme that I’m not finished with yet, but I’m also itching to start a series of sea and skyscapes.
There is something about being in the woods that throws up so many paradoxical feelings, protected yet exposed, so still but constant movement, quiet yet the smallest gust of wind, throws up a ripple of noise that travels through a million leaves all singing a different tune. The sheer enjoyment of making and creating has led me deeper and deeper into the unexplored paths of my imagination, like a journey through undiscovered woods.
The canvass become little windows of feeling for nature. The painters that have fed my journey are Cezanne for his harmony, Richter for his texture, Kiefer for his starkness, Monet and Turner for their adventures into abstracting nature and Doig for his sheer enjoyment of paint. I can't live up to these greats but they have held my hand along the way.
My working method, is to immerse myself in the forest, walk, see, sketch, take photographs, feel…………then back at home paint. Using the sketches and photographs as guides only, I switch on the sub-conscious. These works are made by instinct. They no longer represent an actual place, it is even difficult to decipher the season. I place colours beside each other and build up the layers using all sorts of different implements, your ice-scraper isn’t safe whilst I’m around.
The most important thing now is the doing. Creative activity is the exercise of the soul.
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