Let's Talk Art Blog

When is a tree, not just a tree? Well, I've been thinking.... It seems like a fairly bizarre question to be asking myself, but it's one that's come up in the last few weeks as I've been working on more paintings for my Latent Series, which might be my biggest collection yet.

What if the sky was in the middle? It sounds pretty nonsensical....the real world wouldn't work literally, if the sky was sandwiched between two lumps of earth. But working with abstraction, anything is possible right? Hear me out.... The idea of taking a subject, dismantling it, fragmenting it and then reconstructing it in an entirely different way, isn't new.

Am I a squirrel? Though I might not look like one, I think I'm starting to behave like one! I'm bouncing around the studio between paintings, somewhat like a squirrel leaping acrobatically among the trees. Have you ever seen a squirrel looking as if it's not sure what to do next? I don't think I have.

I am a collector of interesting packaging - not just for printmaking, but sometimes I just can't go past the structure offered by an unusual box! Everything gets vetted before it goes in the recycle bin....

Where do all the words go when I'm painting? I think a lot. And more often than not those thoughts wander around in my brain as words. When I'm in the studio, thinking about what comes next in my process, or the merits of one colour over another, or my next texture for the gel plate, these ideas are always formulated in my mind with words.

My latest work on paper began with a cool colour palette, which I eventually added to with a few warmer colours. This was an interesting sketch as I found several learnings to take away from it.