ABSTRACT PAINTINGS
Original works made in the North Cotswolds
The structure beneath the surface
I make abstract paintings in the North Cotswolds, built in layers of paste, glaze and cream and then scraped back so that what lies underneath can surface. Over that worked ground I place a few weighted forms and a single red line, held in balance on the proportions of the golden ratio. The work moves between two series, The Still Point and Palimpsest.
My studio is where everything comes together, usually with Freddie, my dachshund, asleep somewhere nearby. Most paintings begin outside, walking in the morning light along the Cotswold paths and watching the stone, the fields and the sky settle into planes of colour, and those cream passages of limestone become the grounds I build on.
My paintings are not only expressions of emotion or form. They are closer to portraits of the different parts that live within each of us, distinct and yet connected, each pulling in its own direction and constantly shifting in how they relate to one another. Each painting begins with an awareness of a particular inner dynamic, perhaps a tension, a belief, a protective impulse or a wounded part looking for expression, and the boldness of the colour carries the energy of it.
Each painting also holds two forces. There is a window of bold, moving colour, the part of us that is felt before it is understood, and above it sit fixed forms, the squares and lines and weighted blocks we build to make sense of things. Too much order and a life becomes rigid, too much of the other and it cannot hold its shape, so the paintings are about the balance between the two. Some areas are left rough and unsettled, where something is still in tension, while others are smoothed and quiet, where something has found its place. Where the forces meet I often place a small cross, a still centre that the rest of the painting turns around and radiates from.
The layers matter because so much sits beneath what we first see. The eye goes to the lines and the squares in the same way we hear only the words someone says, but underneath there is far more. I build the surface up in paste and paint, scrape it back, add more and let colour and shape overlap and merge, much as the parts of a person shape one another over time, and I let earlier layers show through, because moving forward often means letting go of an old story that no longer fits, and something of what we let go always remains visible underneath.
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