View Over Bay Painting

Based in Greece, I now divide my time between Athens, Crete and England so I am a European (though English born) artist, who found my artistic voice in my Edinburgh (Scotland) WASPS collective studio. Here I was able to experiment, combining abstraction with figurative painting in oils on canvases that I stretched and framed myself. The light reflecting nature of oil paint, its smell and texture have appealed to me from toddlerhood when I helped 'finish' my father's painting on his lunch break! So, from then on, art was my thing. Self taught in most things, but inspired by others (Picasso, Manet and the impressionists and then Scottish artists like Elizabeth Blackadder), I started drawing in childhood. Gradually through my twenties and thirties, I came to painting in oils and acrylics, making cut out board figures often as commissions. My degree was also self taught in a way through the wonderful Open University, whose History of Art courses I did within a general Arts profile. I conceived the ambition to be an artist by the time I was forty and in 1991 had my first solo show at the Library, Surrey University. Moving to Scotland in 1995, I enjoyed having a studio and taking part in the rich artistic life of Edinburgh. I moved to the wonderful light of Greece in 2003, teaching English to make ends meet. This has been a whole new cultural world and language to absorb and digest, which has helped to expand and mature my artistic horizons. My work has been exhibited in galleries all over Britain and is in public (House of Commons Art Collection) and private collections. I paint in oils on canvas and also in watercolour on paper. It is since living in Greece that I have learnt to love using waterbased paints. With watercolour, the subtle characteristics of the paint combined with water are used to create real or imaginary land, underground or seascapes. The 'scapes are not about a particular view so much as a place to play with paint, sparking off associations in that magical alchemy of art. In oils my style is semi abstract and full of colour. I am passionate about conserving the environment and its biodiversity; my paintings are often inspired by this theme. Other themes that have continued to interest me while living in Greece for over twenty years are landscape, above and below ground, creatures and their relationship to an altered environment.