Going through sketchbooks from the last two years looking at pages that I like for various reasons - I find it difficult to step into non objective abstraction so the idea of landscape is currently prevalent in my sketchbooks. This, even when it is abstract there is still a horizon line and the idea of sky and land. I am thinking its because #getaways are important to me and my sense of attachment to landscape/ocean. My works are always done in the studio taken from memory and emotion.
In the landscape itself I walk, photograph, collecting, some quick sketches if i am organised. Photographs are mostly macro, seeing the small things, patterns, shapes, colours ... abstractions of landscape.
I 'work' every day, slow stitch at night and these things I have learnt -
I love what i do
love colour
I am not afraid of colour
I am a messy painter
I am not a planner; I dive in and wait to see where it takes me
I love texture and layering, a pallimpsest
My interest in 'mapping' comes through in my paintings
I love to play, am curious, experimental
I see my 'failures' as another one in the 'reject' pile waiting to be rebirthed
I see my journey so far as short, coming to it late and a case of putting miles on the canvas - an important part of any apprenticeship.
I look forward to seeing where 2023 takes me as i continue exploring and discovering what i love in painting.
*palllimpsest - noun
a manuscript or piece of writing material on which later writing has been superimposed on effaced earlier writing.
something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form. "Sutton Place is a palimpsest of the taste of successive owners"
These sketches are all so beautiful. I would hang any of them.