Dialogue and Synthesis II Painting

Art began for me with ceramics in school. The pottery room was a refuge and a place to go and immerse myself in exploring clay. Baking hot in summer with the kiln on and freezing cold in winter with ice on the buckets. A hugely important self-affirming experience of creativity. Life took me in other directions for several years. A career in business and marketing. Training to become a psychotherapist and then a trainer and supervisor of other therapists. In some ways I consider the training to be a therapist was my art education as well. Not for techniques but for being able to deconstruct and make sense of my experience, explore my inner world and know my own mind to express it creatively. It was also what led me back to art and the need for more creativity and a personal refuge. My initial forays back into the world of art came in the form of impressionistic oil paintings of landscape. I have always had a strong connection to nature, walking where I live and enjoying the connection to landscape. This exploration lasted for a few years with an increasing interest finding my authentic voice as my work became more abstract, less about external references and more driven by internal imagery. Now, in my art practice I am interested in the unique individuality of experience, drawing on my experience as a psychotherapist and understanding of metaphor, symbolism and unconscious associations and meaning. Some of the key ideas in my work are about nature, archaeology and time. The ephemeral nature of things juxtaposed with the continuity of place and human experience. These themes are present in my work in how it may be experienced rather than as obvious visual references. They emerge in the way I make use of surface texture, paint handling and line. I am particularly interested in stimulating imagination in the viewer through curiosity and evoking a sense of connection to history, place, and people through oblique references of form alongside layering and texture in the painting. I will create a series of paintings where I like to explore and immerse myself in a theme, question, or idea. The work is mixed media, this includes acrylic paint combined with pencil crayon, oil pastel and sometimes collage. My 30 years of being in business inform the other areas of my art practice where I run art workshops and coach other artists.