WHY I PAINT

THE LOVE OF COLOUR, STORY TELLING, and sharing the sheer joy of paint are the reasons I make art. It's totally my thing. Almost as much my thing as are simple pleasures of life ... the dog walk, the first snowdrops, the geese on the estuary, the perfect cup of tea, lunch with a friend...

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"Colour is everything. When colour is right, form is right." - Marc Chagall.

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I remember being completely in love with colour as early as 8 years old when my Uncle George (he who had been a desert rat, and in his 70’s still sported a rather dapper pencil moustache) presented me with a tin box of watercolours.

They were a thrill to behold! A dazzling array of row upon row of jewel-like lemons, fuchsias, and turquoises. It seemed to my eight-year-old self that I was in heaven and held the key to artistic bliss in my hands. However, this was in fact the first time I was to experience creative disappointment. The colours, when applied with a rough black bristle brush to thin newsprint paper, were lifeless. The paper wore through as I tried to apply increasing layers of the insipid colours to achieve some of the tin’s promised lustre.

After so many years I still vividly remember both the anticipation and disappointment of that event. And it's been my lifelong mission to find colour that satisfies. I think I'm almost there.

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The use of narrative, colour and flat plane gives the work unity and individuality of style along with a sense of joy.  My paintings are immediate, extracting the essential point of a scene or composition and conveying it with colour and innocence. The world I depict is fun and familiar and I hope viewers connect to the scenes and are taken to remembered people and places.