Studio thinking chair with art journal and fountain pen
After most painting sessions I sit in my thinking chair and write.
Sometimes I engage with problems in a painting—and note ideas of how to resolve the piece. Other times I note something I see in a painting that fires me up.
Often I just write to see what comes out. There’s something about writing that clarifies things for me. Not all the time, but fairly often I get a real insight through writing. I discover something I “knew” deep down, but wasn’t entirely aware of.
One day last month I wrote that I was looking for 3 things in my work:
- Weirdness
- Movement
- Colour excitement
Once the words were on the page, I thought hey, that’s pretty succinct—and true.
What do I mean by weird?
When I looked up “weird” The Concise Oxford Dictionary offered up odd, strange, supernatural, unearthly, incomprehensible, and of course the weird sisters, the witches from Macbeth. I’d say strange, unearthly and a bit incomprehensible is what I’m looking for.
I don’t want to create anything inaccessible—but by incomprehensible, I’d qualify that by adding, at first glance. I’m not into being cryptic but I don’t want to create easy paintings that you look at once and feel you’ve seen all there is to see. “Ah, a landscape. Got it.” I want to puzzle you (and me) a little. Demand a bit of effort, some engagement.
I like unearthly as a descriptor too. Our earth is at the heart of my work—land, water, organic life. My immersion in the local landscape is what I paint, but I want what I paint to be more than what you can see with your eyes. I want to celebrate the sensual world. But I also want to go beyond the physical reality into the sense of wonder and communion than can arise.
Strange to me implies something you haven’t seen before, something unknown. While I’m not creating a new art movement, you haven’t seen my particular take on the world before. (Sometimes what I paint is strange or unexpected, even to me!)
One caveat I’d add, is that I don’t seek a strangeness that’s a product of my personality or an emotional state. I am not trying to express myself. My aim is to tap into something beyond my self that is more universal, more true.
Movement + colour
Movement seems fairly self-explanatory. I like my paintings to look like they’re in motion or even made of motion. Dancing has been a lifelong love and I often dance in the studio with a brush in my hand. In my best work I think that love of movement is there.
And lastly colour excitement, which is also pretty straightforward. A section where a warm pink collides with a cool green, a few brush hairs of rich yellow over a lilac passage—these little moments light me up when they happen and when I notice them later. Sometimes I even salivate! (I definitely have a touch of synesthesia, as do many artists.)
Of course there are lots of other things I’m looking for in my work—strong compositions, paint handling—the craft. But weirdness, movement, and colour excitement are guiding principles. And that they just landed on the page one day confirms for me the value of writing, of pausing and listening within.
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