About

This past year I felt the need to become an explorer, an experimenter, a risk taker in my art.  

I decided to deepen my knowledge of colour and paint mixing, and chose abstract art as a vehicle for experimentation. To start with, I painted over old canvasses and began with small and simple abstracts. My confidence rose. Then I moved to larger canvasses and I had no idea what I was doing. The paintings took on a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde air, as I never knew who was in charge of the style or approach on any day. My confidence sank. I took a break from paint and travelled to Costa Rica in April and May, stopping over in New York on the way home for several days. I took my iPad and made some quick digital sketches instead.

A series of challenges in my personal life in the later half of the year meant I had to look inwards and reflect, something I had been avoiding for decades by being busy. To add to my troubles, the UK economy plunged into financial chaos with the leadership battles for Prime Minister, just as we had put our house on the market. In addition to the pandemic and worldwide inflation hikes catalysed by the war raged by Russia in Ukraine we had the pain of Brexit adding extra red tape to travel and customs paperwork for businesses.

When I picked up the paints again the colours became darker, the paintings were not so ‘nice’ or commercially appealing. But I felt they were truthful. The work had become more complex, geometric shapes and blocks of colour imposed over random colours, textures and shapes. I was looking at a psychological portrait of myself trying to find order while living through a time of rapid dramatic change.

2022 has definitely been a tricky year, and like most of us I have had to find new levels of resilience. Next year I will be moving my studio to France when I buy a former farmhouse within a National Park in the Perigord Vert region. In changing how I painted, I found myself.