About The Artist
My art process
I’m an abstract expressionist artist. I use mainly oil paint combined with cold wax medium (bees wax with a small amount of resin). I’m passionate about colour, light and subtle texture in my paintings. My aim is to create my own personal, emotional and visual response to the beautiful natural world around me, suggesting the essence of special memories, but not replicating the exact same image. I dance with paint.
The beauty of adding cold wax medium to oil paint, is that there’s always something new to explore and I’m able to experiment with materials and tools as the painting develops. My process of building many paintings, the paintings change dramatically from start to finish. I love to see hints of under-layers peeping through, a sort of ‘complex simplicity’ which adds a unique character and interest. I don’t want the viewer to just look, but touch my work. Having always been a rather energetic person (maybe not as much today!), my paintings have an expressive, gestural slant to them and I think this is why I am particularly so drawn to the sea. There is something intriguing about aged, weathered surfaces that reveal the endless passage of time, whether it is a weather beaten rock/pebble on the beach, a higgledy piggledy crumbling old stone wall (memories of Yorkshire) or a rusting piece of metal, they all have a sense of history and I often try to replicate these surfaces in my paintings, by constantly reworking the surface; gouging, scraping, and rubbing. One aspect of working with oil and cold wax that I particularly enjoy, is the fact that I rarely use paint brushes, instead preferring to use any tool that will create organic marks and shapes; palette knives, spatulas, sticks, rollers, bowl scrapers, skewers, even my own hands (it can be very messy!) There is something tactile and organic about using cold wax with oils. Oh! and I think I better mention that I only use high quality, high pigment oil paints; such as Michael Harding, Blockx, Gamblin and Sennelier, the colour saturation in these paints is amazing.
About me
I’m originally from a little village in West Yorkshire (near the Pennines), where I lived until my late teens. My dad was an architect and mum a dressmaker, so I suppose ‘art has always been in my blood.' To be honest, my artist’s path began when my grandma would always buy me a tin of Caran d’Ache watercolour pencil crayons for Christmas (I had no idea just how expensive they were at the time!) I’m sure the vast, weather beaten, rolling Yorkshire countryside I grew up in, often reappears in my paintings. I’ve lived in many different places since my teenage years including London, Paris from 1989 to 2006 (and no not not Rome, sadly!), the south coast and the rugged north east coast of the UK. My dreams of studying art were dismissed by parents and teachers and I was persuaded to study more academic subjects, so studied languages instead. I began my working life as a bi-lingual secretary in a French bank in London and Eurotunnel, London. I moved to Paris in 1989, raised my family there and also worked as a teaching assistant at The British School of Paris. What a wonderful place Paris was to live and the many years I lived there, have definitely had a huge influence on my art. We often visited Claude Monet’s house and garden in Giverny and actually lived right on the banks of the Seine where the famous painting ‘Bain a La Grenouillere’ was painted by both Monet and Renoir. I spent a lot of time in the south and south west of France and my paintings often evoke those beautiful colours, textures and scenery I remember so clearly. On returning to the UK, I was very lucky to finally study fine art as a mature student 2009-2011 at Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne and perhaps should add that during that time, I won the Newcastle Building Society Student Art Competition two years running.
It wasn’t until five years ago, that I eventually had the opportunity to concentrate solely on my art, working from my studio/shop, which is in the award winning Market Hall Shrewsbury, where I not only paint, but have the added advantage of meeting in person many of my collectors, I’m so lucky and thoroughly appreciate this.
