Exhibition Title: Watching the World Go By
Three months of travel in 2023 provided me with opportunities to observe the world around me. From the daily rituals of a morning coffee to an evening aperitivo, to the landscape surrounding me, I drew the world going by.
As a very outgoing and extroverted person, drawing and painting helps me to slow down. My art practice is my way of reflecting and contemplating. Each work begins with a drawing in a sketchbook or one of my concertina sketchbooks, prepared for my travels. To these, I may add watercolour, acrylic or collage. My sketchbooks are an ‘aide de memoire’, powerful in recalling the sights, sounds and feel of a place.
This body of work is divided in two, both thematically and stylistically. The landscapes lie somewhere between the representational and abstract. I interpret scenes through colour, line and pattern. In my drawings and paintings executed quickly ‘en plein air’, I search for the lines and the patterns in front of me, from the rough bark of an old olive tree in Italy to the messy bales of wheat on a farm in rural France to ancient lichen covered rocks in a remote corner of Iceland, aided by the grounds I have already laid in the concertina books that serve as my sketchbooks.
The paintings that describe the daily rituals of life are far more representational but in a wonky, quirky way. I use colour to challenge, to provoke and to describe. Line and pattern are also important but in this case it is shape and colour that are the most compelling elements.