Acrylic, gouache, paper and linen on canvas, 2023, 61 x 61 cm.

This is a further exploration of painting over linen gessoed onto canvas combined with collage. On the figures and parts of the tree-trunks the acrylic is so watery as to be like watercolour, and these were painted over what started out looking like an abstract collage with just the blue painted paper and the spotted paper stuck onto the whitened linen.

the final result has a strong graphic element which retains the abstraction, but combines it with the narrative of the two figures bundled up in thick clothes hurrying through the wood with the little dog almost hidden behind the woman.

Inspired by a weird Hipstamatic photo of a doocot (there are ruined and repaired gothic stone doocots (dovecots) everywhere here in Fife), this painting was the beginning of  a new phase of painting for me – using the unbleached fine shirt linen as a surface gessoed onto the plain canvas, and allowing the figurative into my work.

Acrylic, pencil, graphite and linen on canvas, 2023, 100 x 100 x 5cm

detail of the edge of the unbleached fine linen.

detail of some of the words written onto this painting.