artist's statement:

A COLLECTION OF RECENT PAINTINGS FOR THE BARBARA STANLEY GALLERY, LONDON.   February 2008

The title of this collection of recent paintings ‘Cerulean Dreams’ helps to conjure up, simply in words, what I am setting out to achieve in my work.  I want to create living, tactile paintings, that maximise the power of colour and bring out the full physical qualities of the paint itself.  The subject matter (being the starting point and framework for my paintings) needs to have as much freedom and opportunity for experimentation as possible. I have used conventional ‘in the moment’ perceived scenes as well as scenes from the subconscious ie dreams and thoughts, all in the one composition.  This keeps me challenged as a painter and continually allows me to develop my personal language of paint, as well as keeping  the paintings vital and charged with the energy of life.

‘I am fully aware that a painter’s best spokesman is his work’*

My subject matter is, as always, inspired from the people, places, objects, and animals, around me. Inspiration for a painting may come from, for example, looking at an exhibition of Dutch Interiors or a bowl of fruit or vase of flowers, or even from a desire to recreate an atmosphere or sense of place taken from the store of visual memory from my past.  I then develop this source idea from its original preliminary sketch or painting study, into a more detailed composition.  If I feel further inspired I will expand and develop this into a painting that contains figures, still life and landscape.

I currently use a palette knife to paint with, as I find this helps to bring out the full potential of the oil paint in terms of luminosity, texture and intensity of colour.  Also, by its sheer unwieldiness, the palette knife prevents me from becoming too literal with my painting language and becoming too absorbed with irrelevant details.  This enables me to concentrate on the essential qualities of what I am painting.

My personal aim is to develop a language of paint in which I can communicate and express myself fully; an alternative world of colour and form, where there is harmony, vitality, stability, timelessness, hope freedom, humour and a promise of more to come.’

       *Notes of a painter, Henri Matisse, 1908.