The title of my exhibition is : "An affectionate and colourful view of the Chilterns". I am exhibiting at the Maker Space in Nuffield, a cafe where there is lovely cake. I will be exhibiting work on canvas and on paper. There will also be some smaller works on board and cards for sale. There will be works in oil and in gouache and acrylic as well as watercolour.
I am exhibiting at The Maker Space in Nuffield. I am trained as a Translator and Interpreter and have a love of languages and sound as well as music; I play violin in Chiltern Edge Orchestra and I think it is the interplay between colour and sound that comes out in my work. It's that connection to sound and colour that I enjoy when I paint; when I am painting I feel that there is a keyboard of colour and tones are either in tune or in key or not. I relate very much to the jazz musician Miles Davis quote about music and art "A painting is music you can see and music is a painting you can hear".
I am primarily inspired by my love of the countryside here in the Chilterns and many of my paintings are of local scenes that I have a connection to through family or friends; I have many happy associations with the landscape here and I think that comes out in my painting. I didn't grow up in the Chilterns; my love of the countryside was probably engendered by my father, who was an agricultural expert in Cambridgeshire and I have many happy memories of visiting farms with him and going on long walks in the countryside. I always think of my father when I see sheep and when I see the rapeseed fields as well as he didn't approve of rapeseed as a crop. I walk and ride a lot in the countryside and if I see something that I love, I will take a photograph and later produce something on paper or canvas, while the image is fresh in my mind. It might be something that has caught my eye or an object or animal that has triggered a train of thought, although once I start to paint, I am not really looking at anything; what I am painting is coming from my imagination. I am not interested in detail or accurate representation of my subject, more in conveying what I feel; as people, we don’t see in one colour or in a single frame like a photographic image, what we see around us is filtered and coloured by past emotions and experiences.
My painting style is expressive and spontaneous; it is not neat and traditional. It is quirky and the scenes depicted are local and personal to me. I can draw in detail and I trained in Life Drawing but somehow something sensible and ordered and flat in colour just doesn't express what I want to put across; my work highlights intense colour and energy. When I look back at my paintings from 25 years ago, they were very different; very traditional and ordered, but something changed when I had my daughter 21 years ago; I blame her for the pink in my work!! It's something in the moment that I am feeling; I am not interested in detail or accurate representation of my subject, more in conveying what I feel; my paintings are generally completed in one sitting “alla prima” in a wave of energy.