loose pigment, sand and shell in oil paint over acrylic layers on canvas, 71 x 71 cm
This alder tree was uprooted from its river bank during a storm in early autumn 2024, somewhere in the Tay’s catchment and brought down river and estuary to end up on Kinshaldy beach.
One of the voices in my poem.
mothering in losses shifting my traces my walls my life
a threshold shaken and leaving this thin coating I am self I am votive
evading all even the deepest sleep of this place
loose pigment, sand and shell in oil paint over acrylic layers on canvas, 80 x 70 cm
part of a new body of work I am making about Tentsmuir and Kinshaldy beach where I walk my dog once or twice a week, based on a poem I wrote almost 2 years ago (published in Tears in the Fence Literary journal Spring 2023).
lark song opening what happens with sand with shell the seams spread wide
stitches running
shape the entrance with flooded grasses and behind the quiet dark trees
the dark forest
the abandoned stations singing a judgement
loose pigment, sand and shell in dammar glaze medium over acrylic layers on canvas, 100 x 120 cm
part of a new body of work I am making about Tentsmuir and Kinshaldy beach where I walk my dog once or twice a week, based on a poem I wrote almost 2 years ago (published in Tears in the Fence Literary journal Spring 2023).
I take a pocket-sized sketchbook with me on walks to make quick drawings in, and from these and from notes taken with my iphone camera, a new set of paintings both small and very large is coming into existence. I am experimenting with mixing sand and shell fragments from the beach into the paint, or sprinkling it over the wet paint, to bring the materiality of place into the paintings. I want to explore the idea of belonging and spiritual release through the experience of nature in that mix of paint and the material of the land in my work.
somewhere in the future a nameless summons
the undercurrent dissolves
withering saltmarsh wildflowers
quickly weaving water dances forwards
towards whatever end
detail, lower edge
detail, centre.
oil and acrylic on collaged canvas, 80 x 70 cm
I have brought my painting materials indoors as the garage studio is too expensive to heat over the winter, and my painting space is squeezed into this room with its french doors. It always makes me think of Bonnard’s indoor/outdoor paintings, and this is a reworking of one of those I got stuck on a year ago. Really happy with how I resolved it, with Bonnard’s help. I have been loaned three marvellous books on his work, two of them from Paris museums. Also there is about to be a show at the Ingleby gallery in Edinburgh connecting some of their painters with Bonnard’s influence, so I was inspired to paint my own versions.
Oil and acrylic on collaged canvas, 61 x 61 cm
I am continuing to paint the garden and will be making a range of sizes, zooming in on various elements like this table with the bonsais. I painted it from a photo I took out of the kitchen window at the end of September, when I had Covid.
acrylic, oil and damar varnish on board, 2024, 30 x 20 cm
The depth of ancient Caledonian forest, somewhere in Perthshire, echoed in the layered depths of paint.
Oil over acrylic on canvas, 2024, 60 x 60 cm
Walking in tangled woodland full of deadfall, bog and fern, wilderness in Fife, this summer, trying to find a loop walk off the Pilgrim Way.
Acrylic, cold wax and oil paint on canvas, 2024, 120 x 100 x 4 cm
I was inspired to have another go at painting my garden by Hayley Barker – and Andrew Cranston, Bonnard and Paul Klee (ref Paul Klee for watering cans and trellis) and Matisse – my garden made over four years with cardboard sheet mulching over tired lawn, and prairie flowers grown from seed
oil over acrylic on a beautiful cradled panel I won from the company Artists’ Surfaces, in the collaboration they do on Instagram with Artist Support Pledge. It is 40 x 30 cm and 3 cm deep. I tried to be too careful with it on the first go round, but for this final version I mostly used a palette knife and quite thick oil paint.
It’s the same distant figure reading on a deckchair in the park in Paris. The photo made the wall of the Orangerie grounds look like a lake, so I went with that.