I learned only today that the word obsession comes from the latin obsidere – to besiege. from ob (before) and sedeo (I sit) Working on a big drawing like this, for months on end, I am not sure which of us is under siege – who sits before whom? Perhaps the poet Li Bai understood: ‘We sit... Read more »
All day today I have been working at the printshop …and thinking about Helen A rare and lovely bird. When I last saw her, a week ago in the hospice, I had told her about finding a dead moorhen – ‘perfect, undamaged,’ I said. ‘Oh, so quite damaged on the inside!’ She replied. She told me... Read more »
“….In everyone there sleeps A sense of life lived according to love. To some it means the difference they could make By loving others, but across most it sweeps As all they might have done had they been loved. That nothing cures. “ Lines from Faith Healing by Philip Larkin –
At its deepest level, any poetic utterance grows out of a desire to overcome loneliness, to share experience. “Absence” Charcoal and Inks on Arches paper. 40″X 27″ approx For a long time – really since I started making paintings as a conscious adult – I’ve been troubled by notions of ‘self’ and of art as... Read more »
‘Gone’ Charcoals and watercolour on Arches paper. 13″ X 13″ In loneliness there is also some joy – autumn darkens. Buson (1776) Over the past weeks, as a result of the exhibition TREE at Beaux Arts in London, I have been asked several times if there is a ‘Japanese influence’ to my work. Sadly, I... Read more »
Most of this year has been spent working for an exhibition that will pay homage to one of the most beloved aspects of our landscape – the tree. Patricia Singh of Beaux Arts London was very keen that Revd. Richard Davey – who has written several times on my work with great insight and sensitivity... Read more »
One morning last week a friend called to say he had found a stoat in the lane. He said it must have been hit by a car but was unmarked and would I like it to draw? Waiting for him to turn up with the creature, I noticed that I knew nothing about stoats and had... Read more »
This is to be the year I learn la manière noire – the dark method. There is something rather magical about mezzotints. I’ve noticed when printing them in the workshop that it is never long before some curious soul is drawn to look over my shoulder and enquire, “what on earth is that?“ They are simply unlike anything... Read more »
In 2010 I took a break from my usual painting practise to make a series of very small still-lives. My yoga teacher had been talking about the nature of ‘practise’ – not getting too attached to good and bad, just practising, modestly and consistently and every day. Non-attachment was an idea I was familiar with... Read more »
“The ash tree growing in the corner of the garden was felled. I heard the sound and, looking out and seeing it maimed, there came at that moment a great pang and I wished to die and not to see the inscapes of the world destroyed any more.” So wrote Gerald Manley Hopkins in around... Read more »
It has been two years this month since I picked up a paint brush. For two years or more before that I had been finding oil painting increasingly confusing. Nothing pleased me. At times the multiplicity of choices – brush, colour, tone, surface, subject and so on – had, without exaggeration, begun to make... Read more »
This story begins a long time ago, when I was a little girl in what felt like a simpler time. Out on my bicycle one summer’s afternoon, I found a wounded crow in the lane. Carrying it carefully home, my nan explained to me that farmers will deliberately maim a single crow – knowing... Read more »