Maureen Whitehead

“The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.”
Francis Bacon

In my earlier role as a teacher, everything had been more or less structured, and so, painting replicas of works by artists such as Ernst Kirchner, Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, and others, provided a safe haven for me.

Although I found this practice immensely satisfying, I always had a compelling desire to create my own original works. I had delayed this consideration, as it seemed so daunting to have to rely almost entirely on my own imagination. Eventually, however, I managed to go ‘solo’ and find my own creative style.

My paintings cross over multiple genres, which focus on everyday life experiences and memories and often include horses, flowers, seascapes and dancers. I am intrigued that many of the artists in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries produced many paintings of portraits and flowers as well as their other particular genres. I love to paint characters in a simplistic, yet sophisticated way and when I include their facial features, they seem to take on a life of their own and I feel that I already know them.

I began my original artworks using carefully defined brush strokes with an emphasis on detail. Every daub of paint was scrutinized ...