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 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.
oil, pigment, acrylic and collage on a box canvas, 2024, 80 x 70 x 3.8 cm. How to listen to your painting and stop at the right moment. Quite a lot of words visible on this one, torn up pages from a poetry pamphlet I’ve just produced as a kind of artist’s book.
a figure I found in an old photo I took in the Jardin des Tuillerie in 2017, hidden away in the trees.
acrylic and oils on collaged canvas, 2024, 100 x 120 x 4 cm
acrylic, pigment, and oil paint on canvas, 2024, 120 x 100 x 4 cm
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