The Ancients' Melting Breath Painting

I enjoy getting out into the landscape and experiencing the elements that shape it. I like to gather sensory information on location through sketching, painting, photography and writing to take back to my studio where I seek to get the image out of my ‘eye’ and onto the canvas. My painting is a process of sensory map making - how the landscape is glimpsed, the light and colours, the textures and feeling, the sense and the smell all of which contribute to a visceral portrayal of a sense of place. My paintings draw inspiration from the dramatic Scottish coastline, the quality of light, crystal seas, rugged mountains and arching skies, as well as the forms, colours and textures of the environment as the natural world slowly reclaims and repairs. I am fascinated by the edges where cultivation meets wilderness, the tiny cracks where life thrives and ancient traces of past habitations hold out against the relentless onslaught of the elements. My work is largely intuitive, the act of painting starts a process of discovery and acts to build a stronger sense of experience of the landscape in question. Working with mixed media, multiple layers of paint are built up and scraped back. Mark making and sgraffito techniques are also used to create a surface that is textured and alive. I am inspired by the multi-viewpoint approach explored by Peter Lanyon, the energy and freedom of the abstract expressionists, the light and colour of Rothco, Munch and the Scottish Colourists. I combine observation and experience with aerial, cross-sectional and imagined views to abstract the landscape whilst provoking a sense of the familiar. I want to capture that glimpse of the world that perhaps doesn’t conform to our usual presentation of landscape but yet is as familiar to us all as it was to our ancestors.