Healing Painting

Born in Hertfordshire 1969.I have been painting for the last 25 years."A memory is what is left behind when something happens and does not completely unhappen". Psychologist E. De Bono. As a painter i'm concerned with landscape and its relevant facets and inherent aesthectics associated with it, both visual and otherwise, the landscape for me should be read and interpreted as per the function rather than mere visual appraisal.The focus on the relationship between landscape and various aspects of human life it touches, such as memories and human behaviour. Human existence is reflected in nature, from birth, death and rebirth of each generation. This has been in the centre of our mythology and folklore for centuries. My work explores the relationship between landscapes, memory and a sense of place. Some landscapes are very beautiful but have a very sinister past. We know that through history, the landscape itself has been a medium by which evil is veiled and naturalized. This made me look personally at my own experiences in life, how you can look at a beautiful smile and behind that smile is a person who has struggled and suffered beyond belief. The human condition is constantly sabotaging any kind of happiness and oneness in the universe by finding obstacles, limiting beliefs and the big question of FEAR. What if we would lovingly embrace everything that would normally be afraid of, feeling resistance to, or want to run away from? What if? You wish for something. And it comes into your path. The question then is Whether you are capable of seizing it. ‘ I want to, but I can’t ‘. How often do we say that? Making a decision to pursue what you want and understanding that the suffering makes up the layers in our life, like the landscape with layers of memories of historical, political and evil violence written deep into its core. Feel the fear and do it anyway. Fear is there not to be denied but faced; our true path is embracing the suffering and then letting it go. The next stage in the process is RECOVERY. This implies that something has been lost, devalued and forgotten. Recovery carries with it an inevitable double connotation. On the one side, optimism and hope are attached to the remerging of a precious treasure.