It's been a while...

It's been months since my last blog post, many apologies. But what a few months it has been!

I've moved to Brighton, adopted a dog, been painting, been given a space to use as a gallery in Wandsworth, opened the gallery, had a two person exhibition there with Mark Nader, had to have the dog put down because he had a brain tumour...as I say, it's been quite a few months!

I have been studying abstract painting particularly hard, especially my favourites: Peter Lanyon and Roger Hilton. Their way of turning an experience into a dramatic expression in paint on canvas, or charcoal on paper, has inspired me recently.

Journeys have been on my mind a lot while I have been in the studio lately. The journey from home to hospital and back again every day with my dad, while mum was recuperating at Addenbrookes was the first journey I tried to abstract.

Love and Anger, Oil and charcoal, 2012

This painting took me months and months of overpainting, trying to work with different techniques, using brushes and knives, and drawing with charcoal over and in the paint. I had given up at one point. I had lost any idea of the journey and thought I'd ruined the painting. Then I took out a drawing I had done during one of my son's "meltdowns" (his word) and worked it over the top of the painting.

Another recent work has developed from a number of sources: my weekly journeys both to the studio and to pick up my children each weekend, sketches made at a local fishing harbour, some drawn while contemplating my new diagnoses of Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and research into the cell structure of brain tumours.

November Painting, Oil and charcoal, 2012

I have also been very excited for the past couple of months, since I was informed that I was one of the artists to be chosen for the 100 Curators 100 Days project on Saatchi Online. I have checking every day, but have not appeared so far (although I have my suspicions as to which curator has chosen me, and I think that I may be appearing this week) ...so keep a look out!

Back in the saddle

It has been a very tricky few months recently.

I have had a health scare and had to go into hospital for a colonoscopy. The good news is that I don't have colon cancer, which was my biggest fear. I had a polyp, which was removed, as they can turn into cancer. I just have to have regular check ups from now on. Also, my mother went into hospital to have a large brain tumour removed. The operation went well, thanks to all the staff at Addenbrooke's hospital, Cambridge, and she is on the mend.

My daily travels to visit her in the hospital and my own minor operation were both on my mind when I finally got back into the studio the other week ready to do some work. Since discovering my mum had a brain tumour, I had found it impossible to paint anything figurative. What could I possibly depict that would say how I felt? I simply couldn't. So I had begun a series of abstract works. All of which were mainly colour studies. I have been reading Kandinsky's book "Concerning the Spiritual in Art", as well as the writings of Peter Lanyon and Roger Hilton. I worked on contrast, colour and balance in the overall design of each painting. I felt, however, that far from being about anything in particular, they ended up as just colour studies. I needed something to work from, something to abstract.


I ended up filling a sketchbook with very quick drawings in pen from my experience of the hospital. When I was lying on a gurney being wheeled around an operating theatre, and indeed when I was under sedation, I was aware of how different the world seems, with no "correct" perspective. I could almost see the operating theatre from four different points of view - from the three people working in there as well as from my own.

The Hospital Trip, Oil on canvas, 150 x 100cm (work in progress) 2012

I have begun a large abstract painting now, based upon my experiences of the hospitals I have recently visited. It is not "about" any one thing in particular, but rather an experience of time spent in this unusual way. It is a work in progress, which I would like to share with you.