Landscapes are beautiful to paint, but what really interests me is how they are also the hidden stories of the people who love them. A favourite view can be where we keep memories, plans, hopes, or just simply where we call and feel most at home.
I use acrylics, inks, pastels and fragments of text to make expressive landscapes that are all about bold colour, captured energy, and telling those hidden stories.
‘Yestreen’
Creative motivation: Using drone footage to gain a different perspective on shadow and light. Integrating collage from the local paper and a poem from Huntly’s Makkar (written in Doric, the North East of Scotland’s dialect), to evoke a feeling of sights, sounds, stories, and nostalgia.
Unexpected Story: The collector who owns this piece has fond memories of breaking into the castle grounds and running around it naked for a dare.
‘Strand-on-the Green’
Creative motivation: A response to reading ‘The Pursuit of Love’ by Nancy Mitford and reading a biography of her life, ‘Life in a Cold Climate’ by Laura Thomson. Last lines of the novel are submerged in the water beside a view of the house where Nancy Mitford wrote the novel.
Unexpected Story: Having conversations with the author Laura Thomson about our shared admiration, emotional investment and interest in Nancy Mitford’s life and work. Laura now owns this piece.
‘La Mar’
Creative motivation: Commissioned by a recently retired naval officer to paint a stormy sea from the point of view of a naval boat to help capture the memory of being out in treacherous weather on one of his three trips around the world.
Unexpected Story: Having absolutely no experience of being on the sea far from land made for some amazing research: re-reading Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea’, watching terrifying storms on Youtube, and pouring over personal photographs provided by the naval officer all informed this painting and me!
‘Primavera’
Creative motivation: Tree shapes against a difficult and intense low light.
Unexpected story: This painting became its name. It embodied the feeling of new beginnings, Spring, and emerging from a new world post-lockdown. Also, fittingly, a collector bought this piece for her daughter to celebrate her engagement (another form of a new beginning).