If Indigo Wash and Charcoal Drawing

Being a a painter for me is about constantly exploring, responding to the present and past, and expanding my practise. It seems that at present I have 3 distinct approaches: Expressive movement inspired abstracts, large female subject based gestural paintings and detailed precise small technique orientated works again with the female as subject. This isn’t contrived but just intuitive, next week I could have 6 or 7 approaches: I don't want to restrict my work by pigeon hole-ing it. Life interests me and the past fascinates me. I am always watching and absorbing via sketchbooks, notes and logging moments in my ‘head library’; recall of past events and sensations combine with themes to inform what and how I paint. I am a living sponge of art. I see human form in landscape, we are part of it, we are it. I cant say I had a very practically instructive degree training but I did find a most relevant context to work in as a woman artist. Feminism is beautiful word and concept which engages me with my role of exploring my own position as a woman artist today, and peeling back the layers to reveal a long line of unrecognised talented past women artists. It is a word of politics and social context, a word for my life. The Italian Renaissance is a period that I return again and again to; a time of “daring to be”, an expansion of ideals, and ideas of progression tied up with humanity: warts and all. I explore beauty, I explore pain. I revel in the process of creating: physically wrestling with stretchers and canvas constantly questioning my methods; unpicking and rebuilding my doing; my techniques. materials. how do I get across feelings and open up my paintings to resonate and stand with meaning? How satisfying it is when someone cries in front of a work of mine or revisits it many time to just breathe it in again. I have more work to do until this stage, and many destructive moments are needed to end up up with a truly creative piece. I do strongly believe that all my best works have been started by me yet somehow finished by the paint.. which takes over; its quite fascinating and constantly challenging. I do struggle with how much of me is in the paintings ; the paintings/ drawings are in part self portraits but never form the whole. I am in each landscape, each abstract creation, I am the human subject and then not. I share this with every other creative being musician, dancer etc.etc. I need feeding…..