when you don’t even know you are at the beginning… and then you do…
I’m not an artist who works quickly. It takes me quite a long time to mull over ideas and embrace myself in a concept that feels like it might drive a whole body of work.
“breath” has taken me nearly three years to complete.
Every painting represents uncountable hours exploring and experimenting, paint layering and scratching back, decisions and frustration, what ifs and yeses.
Over and over.
Ultimately there aren’t any that’ll dos.
And every one matters to me as the maker.
Below I have written a little about every piece.
Maybe it can shed some light on my creative practice and what it’s like being an artist steeped in abstract expression.
And the titles always come first…
happed in sky 1
40 x 40cm
oils and mixed media on wood panel
£450
happed in sky 2
50 x 50cm
oils and mixed media on wood panel
£560
happed in sky 3
30 x 30cm
oils and mixed media on wood panel
£320
happed in sky
the light is seeping away
softening shadows
blurring edges
“happed” - Scots for wrapped up, swathed
Even before I had conceptualised “breath” as a body of work, I had made this trio of paintings.
In one (then another and another) I wanted to embody a dual meaning of being kept warm and protected as well as notions of being contained and even constrained by my fears of unknown places.
I hadn’t yet fixed on breathing as a unifier of any work that would follow.
I had a notion of sky enclosing all life to emphasise the unity of the sky over landmass and ocean, providing continuity and interdependence.
It turned out that this was only the beginning of almost three years of work…
work in progress
breathing the same sky 1
75 x 75cm
oils and mixed media on wood panel
£1200
breathing the same sky 2
75 x 75cm
oils and mixed media on wood panel
slipstream breathing
By Autumn 2019 I had already made plans to spend a week-long residency at WWT Caerlaverock on the Solway Coast, just along the road from where I lived as a child along with my earliest memories.
The time I was to spend there would coincide with the overwintering of thousands of barnacle geese returned from their summer breeding ground in Svalbard.
I had already finished painting “happed in sky 1,2,3” and was starting to form ideas about how sky (and importantly our first exposure to sky) contributes to our sense of place within a landscape.
For me the focus was on the merse land of the Solway whose big sky was the first I looked up and saw as a baby.
My plan was to explore how that earliest experience might inform our connection with landscape and our communion with nature as a singular entity.
My time at Caerlaverock was so revelatory.
I had become completely beguiled by the barnacle geese as I watched in awe each dawn as they rose up from the merse and flew right over my head as I leaned out of my skylight window to be part of their morning flying.
They beat their wings and I breathed…
And I made these paintings when I returned home…
the birds will fly and we will breathe,
look up and see
works in progress
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