My latest body of drawings and paintings has the title of ‘Longing and Sweet Sadness’. It began last Autumn as I drew and painted in the woods at the back of my parents house. This is where I played as a child, making camps and exploring. It is where I made huge paintings for my degree show after the hurricane of 1987, when I was in my early twenties. It is the place where my children played, camped and went on bluebell walks every year when they were small. It is where I walk now when I visit my mum, where we go mushroom hunting and gather kindling.
The things that I notice and love now are laden with my memories of all of these times. As I paint and draw I am not searching to paint the view but instead exploring a visual language that could give metaphors for moss and its sponginess under my feet. Phrases of marks that draw attention to the gentle, erratic, paper clatter of leaves falling. Piercing slats of amber light; luminous, looming, dimming, fading, draining away. The sap falling and rising, sleeping and waking; revealing the bare bones of the woodland weave. Then as the trees and undergrowth reclothe my gaze rises and falls, following the sounds of birdsong and tempting me into the plum soft shadows and hidden spaces.
