Little Jungle #3 Painting

I have now been painting again seriously for the last 6 years.In the last year my work seems to have taken off with collectors returning and buying more paintings. I have always been fascinated by pattern, texture and colour. Paul Klee is an inspiration for his playful use of shape and geometrics and Bonnard and Vuillard for their use of colour. I paint in the Hampshire countryside and my studio is a converted stables, so the seasons changing influence when and what I paint. Flowers and the natural world are pretty much an obsession - shapes, textures, colours and the general riot of plants around me impel me to paint. I am about to start a series of larger paintings concentrated on ivy and their weird pinball shapes and unusual colours. I am self taught, although I had the most inspiring A Level Art teacher you could ever wish for! When I was 18 I had a place to go straight to Art School and do a degree and bypass the Foundation because my portfolio was strong, (I might have been taught by one of my heroines, Gillian Ayres, who was head of painting - if I had have taken up the place). Instead I went and became a Theatre Director and Performer with the wish of returning to painting later on.