Holding on Painting

I often take inspiration from the broken unused and wasting things around me. The things that I find beauty in when many don’t see anything. I have always hated waste, and fear its consequences but I love fun and playfulness and change. I could tell a story about a washing-up bottle when I was 7 that started this feeling! I hate to discard things that I find interesting or hold beauty for me. Often my work involves an element of reuse. When I paint it is strongly affected by touch and feel, probably because I first trained as a ceramist over 20 years ago. An image or scene may grab and inspire me and then my fingers will translate that inspiration across the canvas. Sometimes words and stories will be my muse. But I will often rewrite my canvas many times before I feel it is right. Sometimes my mind will have something to say and scrawl a message on top other times a part of me just needs to put down marks and patterns to scrape a mark to vent a feeling or force out a surge of energy. Always it involves the touch and feel of my fingers. Sometimes I have meanings and stories and plans, sometimes just raw feeling. Always I have to feel everything that I do.