Dancer Painting

"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." Leonard Cohen My work is about capturing the essence of a person or place rather than making a likeness. The unique gesturing of handwriting, the words that a person has spoken or written down are forever part of them and as individual as their fingerprints. The clothes worn and personal items have an imprint of that person. These, as well as the face and body have been one inspiration for my paintings. I live and work in the seaside town of Whitstable in Kent, England. I stopped being a teacher in 2010 to concentrate on making my own work. Whitstable is a lively community of artists and the people and places are an inspiration to my work. My daughter is a performer and musician and is often the subject of my paintings. I have recently been examining the masks both literal and metaphorical, that people and especially performers, wear. The act of painting, for me, is one of rumination. As a painting develops, the composition becomes rather like some of the stage sets that are in my paintings, arousing curiosity and inviting questions about what may have happened or what is about to begin. Different layer surfaces reveal the process of applied paint, which hold history, time and memory.