Visual art
What I do on holidays to wild places..............
Sketch, paint, write, walk, swim, scramble. Sometimes I have to improvise, like in the header photo above, where I was all set up to paint and realised I'd forgotten my water pot. While having a lovely cooling swim in Buttermere in the Lake District, I saw a lost welly submerged below me. Problem solved!! It always starts with walking. Usually with a sketchbook in my pocket. Then one thing leads to another. My artwork is inspired by the places I come to know through walking. These can be on the South Downs just a few minutes walk from my home, in wild places explored while away on holiday, in towns and cities I visit and by what I see and experience there, which could be a building, a view, a series of fence posts, a mountain range or the litter stranded on a fence. I show my work at Brighton festival artists open houses, pop up sales, galleries and sometimes on the hill where make it. |
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Walking with a sketchbook in my pocket makes for the best kind of day and while I enjoy sketching on trips abroad, I'm just as happy walking from home to work on the hills at the edge of town. Out in the field, I use ink, twig pens, pastels and watercolour and enjoy letting pages take a dip in the stream or drag wet ink with found sheep wool and seed heads. For urban trips, I like to fit everything into one pocket, so I take just one sketchbook, an ink pen and maybe a few watercolour crayons. I like to make panoramic sketches on my own handmade concertina sketchbooks, sometimes adding written text as an integral part of the pieces. At my work table, I might add collage, acrylics and more pastels, but my aim is always to try to keep some of the lovely spontaneity of the first sketches. |