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!