Every Waking Moment

Exhibition over view. Strathearn Gallery May 2023

Each landscape, has an atmosphere and climate of its own. As you turn the corner and face the sun, the wind now at your back, the ambience shifts. With you and you within it.

This is an exhibition, about these moments, the natural language of nature and the connections we have with it. Noting the shifts in air, light, wind, the fast and fleeting flurries, interspersed with slower, timeless pauses. Light diamonds dance on the lochan, choreographed by the north wind. Disappearing as quickly as they came by the orchestration of passing clouds. Almost imperceptible changes but there all the same. At other times peaty darkness drives through with January squalls leaving a noisy presence that lingers. Later, a silent twilight which has an awareness of its own. Every minute the atmosphere changes we are simply the participants or perhaps custodians of those moments. They are there to be sensed, there to be noticed and to be part of and inspired by.

These oil paintings are my way of communicating what I see and experience when in the landscape whether it be in North East Fife where I live or in the more remote areas that I love to explore, in the hope that others may see it and experience it too

Helen Glassford 2023

Encounters

Catalogue writing for The Scottish Gallery 2022

26th April

It seems appropriate for me to define the experience of landscape as chance meetings, or encounters, with the influence of that experience going beyond the purely elemental. It is internal and peripheral, time and touch, mood and memory. It imprints its character on the psyche, leaves traces in the memory, and strays far beyond any physical map.

I can fully admit that the landscape has a hold over me. Every artist has their muse, and the landscape has infinite stories to tell those who are listening. After a while it seeps under the skin and starts to unveil and reveal the most wonderous of personalities. For me, the landscape is best experienced when alone simply because it both sharpens my senses and allows my mind to wander, yet it is not a solitary experience. Being surrounded by and enveloped in a living landscape where the light can welcome, the hills talk, the seas breathe, and the air excite can be very good company indeed. I am drawn to the remote; searching out places where human presence is absent or at least minimal, where in summer the nights are long in coming, or never too far away in winter. I might be found, or lost, in boundless moorlands infused with the old heavy air of the peat bog, or on bronzed, ancient coasts with long, salt spray winds and where shy mountains become eloquent with the passage of time.

Wildness is something to celebrate. I have never really considered it to be a ‘me and it’ situation, since when we venture to places and spend time getting to know them, we become part of them, and so we are both with them and within them. The cloud-capped distantly disdainful mountain may not immediately welcome you, but it can hold and communicate with you as you walk. This reciprocity is not new, since we and nature have always had a special relationship, but it is one that I am passionate about conveying in paint.

Each moment carries its’ own atmosphere, and each atmosphere shares its glory or gloom to those who are willing to receive it. It is palpable yet visceral and intangible. It is this intangibility that entices me to return to paint it again and again. I walk with my sketchbook in hand, making notes and recording observations that might otherwise dissipate over time. My marks change with each place and each mood, searching for the right language.

What makes us forget and remember is intrinsically linked to our openness to experience. Wildness may be seen in your back garden or local hedgerows, but often for me it is the remote edge-lands of the North and West, where the traveling weather and big skies offer a persistence of raw experience. The Western Isles in particular extend this in limitless generosity. There, where white sands luminesce under turquoise water, or mercury skies echo in the shimmering restless rhythm of the ocean, and the light is often described as tissue-paper thin, we are made aware of a wider world around us. My passage to the Western Isles and St Kilda in the golden days of summer was almost a blur of unfettered, exhilarating moments; a collection of experiences never to be forgotten. Usually when you leave a place it disappears out of sight within minutes, if not seconds, but St Kilda stays with you even when you leave. I felt the same privilege of many travellers before me to this mysterious island, yet I had not realised the effect it would have on me once there, and then thereafter. The Naturalist James Fisher wrote in 1947 that, “The visitor to St Kilda will be haunted for the rest of his life by this place and tantalised by the impossibility of describing it to those who have not seen it”. St Kilda is indeed unique, quite unlike any other Island I have visited, a place not easily understood, and I was certainly tantalised and most definitely puzzled as to how best to paint my experience of this gentle, strong and distant Isle. As I walked around the tops of Hirta and looked out upon the neighbouring Sea Stack guardians of Boreray, Stac an Armin, and Stac Lee, I realised that the Island’s dangerous remoteness makes it both sanctuary and prison. Precipitous igneous rock cliffs that cut sharply into the deep Atlantic, providing resting places for many thousands of sea birds, contrast with the softer, shelving green bay of the southern harbour, sheltered from the prevailing winds. St. Kilda’s complex character is defined by not only its distant location, endless horizons, tumultuous skies and rolling mists, but also by human history. This seemingly desolate place has a soul and heart filled with stories of the Islanders’ enjoyment of a simple, almost utopian existence, and of families supporting one another through hard living conditions, yet once connections grew with the outside populated world, the delicate balance of survival became more difficult to sustain. Ultimately, St Kilda was evacuated.

As with St. Kilda, other locations I visit are imbued with their own histories and characters, felt and heard in the motion of the seas or the winds singing in the crags. Assynt is another of these places that holds a piece of my heart. Rugged and raw, it has charms that entice and entrap the unsuspecting visitor, unlocking a sense of belonging that is almost primal.

November is a month of great change; procrastination is not known here in daylight hours, since time is of the essence yet the hours of darkness pass slowly despite the fast energies from strong south westerly winds. On a calm day the air is ice fresh and ice thin, but in a storm, salt laden and thick. This is a battered and bruised, solitary landscape of fragmented lochans and low brittle heather overlooked by the monumental hills of Quinag, Suilven and Canisp which carry the devastation of the Clearances on their broad shoulders. A landscape that speaks of emptiness yet is steeped in the past, as well as the present, rich peaty layer upon rich peaty layer. The weather systems that readily flow through seem to carry these histories and deposit them like onshore winds to the Lewisian shoreline, onto us, exchanging and then changing how we perceive them.

It is the moulding together of the sensory and visual world with these fleeting, intangible moments that finds a form in my work. I paint the landscape and its multiple personalities, I paint its impalpable atmospheres, I paint the looming shadowy presence of twilight, and the fast and playful movements of air currents on the silent seas, or the veiled and mystical floating Islands just out of reach. Paint poured and dripped, glazes of pigment applied to float and obscure, to enhance, to disclose the unfolding dramas and vistas suggesting both the ethereal and the real. Paint, in tone, mass, colour, and texture, mixed with the sensory and visual world to recreate new encounters.

Helen Glassford 2022

Everything In-Between

Writing for Resipole Solo Show 2021

To paint the landscape as I do means to interact with and explore the intimate and curiously infinite world. The lichens and mosses at our feet and the heavy skies above, the ground and roof to our world and everything in-between.

Encountering the effects of weather patterns and atmospheric shifts on rugged coastlines, cliffed ridges, dark waters, soaring stone or windswept beaches are just part of the story. Each place we visit has multiple elements of influence upon us. I see them as moments but they are almost immeasurable. As we walk on the sodden moors into the shadow of the raincloud we step directly into the cloud’s influence. Our eyes adjust and our senses sharpen. If only for a moment we become part of something else. A changing contoured space, peat bogs absorbing light, lochans reflecting. Sunlight spilling over distant mountain ridges, earthy aromas at your feet as you tread through the undergrowth. The shadow of the cloud not only defines the undulating fabric of the land but also the mood. It seeps into our skin if we allow it and the personality of the visual and sensory world meld together.

These moments are my subject, these moments take on a painterly form.

Free to Roam

My time at Tatha and moving on

17th November 2020

My last day at Tatha Gallery is fast approaching. As some of you may know, I have taken the decision to make new and positive changes in my life, and to carve out a future to which I will be fully committed. I am looking forward to what lies ahead, yet it is natural that I am also filled with trepidation. I am leaving behind a business that I have put my heart and soul into. Anyone who has started their own business or who has chosen to change their path, will surely understand the mixed emotions that come with moving on, but I am proud of everything we have achieved since the idea of Tatha was born eight years ago. Since then, the gallery has become synonymous with quality and style, has become known internationally for wonderful Scottish Art, and has brought light and enjoyment for a great many.

Deciding to do something about your ideas can often be daunting. We tend to think of the pitfalls instead of the opportunities, but if your dreams are close to your heart they become an existential need. For instance, when I founded Tatha Gallery with my former business partner I had the deep desire as a single mum to provide for my daughter, and to show her that you can make positive choices to help change your life for the better. You can take control and forge a way forward however nerve-wracking it maybe. My years as a self-employed artist had already been fruitful, yet I knew I had more in me, with plenty more energy and ideas to commit to the arts. At the time, rightly or wrongly I always felt painting was something of a selfish pursuit. A piece of my jigsaw was missing, and I realised I had the desire to give more back - to make a difference, and to help others.

I didn’t want to go down the route of Academia as many artists do, because as a free-spirit the restrictions and demands of employment within an institution would very likely have been too great. Since leaving Art College I had increasingly become frustrated with what I felt were entrenched perceptions that commercially successful art could not also be taken seriously. I left Art College in 2002 with a Masters and Diploma under my belt with the overriding feeling that being able to sell your art was somehow frowned upon. This is a conversation I have enjoyed time and time again in my time at Tatha and it is one I still feel passionate about. I wished to set about finding a way of changing this or indeed trying to shift and blur the edges somewhat; letting it be known that it is indeed okay to sell your art and if you are able to sell it then it doesn’t mean that it is in some ways less worthy of acclaim. If some art seems inaccessible it doesn’t automatically mean it is better. We have proved this time and time again at Tatha, bringing a huge variety of great art to the area and inspiring and enriching the lives of those who then went on to choose to purchase, and live with the work they saw. We have shown that Scottish artists are full of talent, passion, and incredible ideas, and that the work they do does indeed make a difference to people’s lives.

Back in 2012, the gallery had its genesis. Marie and Mark Cashley had in mind the huge and somewhat impressive project of resurrecting and restoring the sadly dilapidated Newport Hotel. They had great vision and determination, and over eighteen months or so we formed the ideas to create a space where people could enjoy Artworks with the Tay Estuary as a beautiful backdrop. It was hands on from the very beginning. Courage, belief, and determination are needed to embark on such an adventure, but it takes even more to make it succeed. Both the local and Arts community were behind us all the way, and for this I will be forever grateful.

The launch of the inaugural exhibition in April 2014 was certainly a night to remember. Rain was pouring down, but the Gallery was packed to the hilt. Richard Demarco had very warmly agreed to open the gallery for us, leaving me quite an act to follow with my inaugural speech. I realised then that people want others to succeed. They want to offer support, and be part of new things. It gave me faith to go forward with the ideas that would hopefully put Newport on Tay on the International Art map.

Tatha became a place where ideas could be made visual, connections could be made for others, and life could be enriched. We offered exhibitions, and accompanying talks and demonstrations, within a communal creative hub that would inspire all ages. Building the trust and endorsement took time and a lot of effort, and the learning curve for building a business was steep and exponential. This was an exciting time. The model was always flexible, the work fun, and the business grew. It was also an exciting time to be a woman in business and as a single mum I wanted to be a positive role model for my daughter, to show her that women can indeed shoot for the stars. I took advice from respected businesswomen and men who all said to believe in yourself and surround yourself with good mentors. Both pieces of advice proved to be invaluable.

Whilst building the Gallery’s reputation consumed much of my time and energy, I became ever aware that my own work as a Painter should never be neglected and in fact I made sure that I allotted specific time slots for each, seeking balance by often working late into the night once my daughter was in bed. Since I am most happy when I paint, the extra hours were never a chore. In the midst of this two-pronged working life, I was often asked whether I was a gallerist, or an artist? The question was interesting, but almost irrelevant. At this time, I truly felt that it was possible to be both, and indeed became both, as my mind moulded itself to the two roles and I saw the benefits that each offered the other. Being a gallerist has been really fascinating, giving me invaluable insights into the business side of the Art World that I otherwise would not have had.

There have been many highlights in my time at Tatha. We hosted a fabulous solo show by Frances Walker in the first year which led to us working on her behalf, along with Arthur Watson, in helping to bequest her Antarctic Suite of paintings to the McManus Galleries in Dundee. Seeing this body of works there in the recent exhibition sent shivers down my spine, knowing that these wonderful paintings were now to be in their care in perpetuity.

Working with Norman Gilbert over the years has been a delight. On every level his exhibitions have been a success. His passion was unwavering, his paintings a continuing delight. His exhibitions with Tatha made the world a smaller place by connecting thousands of people all over the planet who loved and admired his work. The BBC Loop programme was a huge success in helping to promote his imagery and story. It was a very sad day when Norman passed away. I was truly humbled to have been asked to speak at his funeral, and honoured to have been able, along with Lindsay, to have played such a large part in sharing his work globally.

None of this would have happened were it not for all the support that we were given. Art critics Jan Patience and Giles Sutherland worded generous articles in favour of our shows. Art International covered three of our exhibitions, and local help came repeatedly from Michael Alexander at the Courier. Spreading the news on a more personal level came from our dedicated and loyal customers, many of whom are now friends. I feel so thankful to everyone who came through the doors with their words of encouragement and am sorry I will not be able to thank everyone in person. In the nearly seven years that our doors have been open we have hosted 54 exhibitions and supported over 200 artists. These artists have been paramount to our success and I am truly thankful to all of them for producing such stunning work and committing to the exhibitions over the years. Working with Lindsay and Clare has been a joy, making the tough times fun and the good times great. I leave in the knowledge that the gallery is in wonderful hands. Lindsay will fly the flag with continued energy and renewed vision, and I am in no doubt that Tatha will go from strength to strength in the years to come.

I am truly excited about venturing forth with my career in painting and I am happy that I can now fully commit to putting all my energies into exploring new ideas and projects. The landscape of Scotland has so much to offer and in recent years I have missed the freedom of being able to roam at will to find new subject matter. I plan to organise residencies where research can be undertaken in areas of Scotland that I perhaps haven’t been to before. From my Newport studio in my first year I will create a body of work with the fresh eyes and renewed focus that reflects the new-found freedom. This will hopefully reflect a freer year for us all after such a difficult 2020.

There is much to be celebrated here in Scotland. The attraction of the raw and uninhabited landscapes such as Rannoch Moor and the Northern Highlands still have a hold over me, but I will take time to experience the coastline beaches and shoreline closer to home too. The drama and the solitude of these places is powerful and often threads its way through my work. The landscape has to be experienced first-hand and at length to then paint it with the respect it is due. Perhaps I am entranced by the idea of the hermit lifestyle, I will certainly revel in the quiet delights of spending time in the wilds but with a firm intent to create work which lets others discover the true nature and glory of Scottish escapism. I fully intend to share this with you all via exhibitions, my website and Instagram.

Research and writing will also play a larger part in my work going forward, to be an artist means that multi disciplines can be explored and the poetic and lyrical nature of my work lends itself to exploring writings and words of others. How people see the world is truly inspiring. Despite my ideas in the earlier naive years of my career about creating being rather insular pursuit I now realise it is in fact the opposite. Art connects and truly has the power to transform the way we think and feel. So, I find myself once again taking a huge step forward, making decisions and changes to my life. I believe that our lives can take many twists and turns for the better, our formative ideas of who we are meant to be are malleable if you wish. New colour can be added and subtracted as you see fit.

2020 will have brought about many life changing situations for people and for those teetering on the edge of wonderous new directions I would wholeheartedly, with a little planning, recommend going for it. Paint with that new colour, make your new marks and explore potential.

Helen Glassford at The Scottish Gallery

Experiencing a landscape is primarily, and perhaps principally, visual. In this first, raw, appreciation it exists in so many ways. It is colour and form, line and mass, depth and panorama. But it is so much more. The landscape presents itself as prospect and horizon, heartland and periphery, substance and shadow. More than this, even, the landscape offers up an atavistic perception. It touches a primitive nerve, erupting into a wild sense of anterior being. In this sense it is, uncompromisingly, elemental.

This experiential character of landscape sits at the core of my painting. In which case each painted landscape distils, not simply the look of a place, but its testimony within the human heart. These paintings are created in order to evoke a sense of mood and feeling through tone, mass and ‘touch’. The folds of colour, the fluid passages of paint, the feathered edges between complementary forms, the striations and spots of colour all create a landscape in constant change. A restless world in motion. In these ways, the landscape may explore the realms of mood, and memory, and imagination.

Given this expansive vision, the configurations in my paintings are created in order to chime with this desire. Land and sea meld into sky. The edges between shoreline and water, hill and horizon, cloud and skyline all soften into an unfolding diorama. The colour and tone echo the mood of the scene, and the emotional release presented in the vista. Each work presenting a moment in time, and recognising a passionately intense experience.

These new works on display at The Scottish Gallery are depositions in respect of these ambitions. A panorama, like Spectator, offers a horizon, sea and sky that embodies contrasts of dark and light in a lyrical confirmation of the drama of the natural world. While The Day We Met pushes these insights towards a tone poem evoking the ethereal qualities of atmosphere and ambiance. Raw, may be regarded as a more representational, but none of these works are simple recordings of place and Raw embodies all the tension of wild weather and impending storm. Some of this turmoil is echoed in Continuum, while Trace I and Trace IIalleviate this sense of storm and tempest in a pensive, still, calm. Forbidden is fascinating for its near abstract qualities, an austere evocation of land and sky replete with a primordial fervour.

I believe that these descriptions can only hint at the depth and sentiments in my paintings. Some sense of their poetic content is evidenced in the titles of the works. But, the real passion of their creation can only be appreciated intuitively, emotionally, and of course, visually.

The following essay was written whilst on a residency in North West Scotland. It will feature in my forthcoming book.

The Mysterious Hunt

February 2019

As I turn off the A835 sign posted Achiltibuie, I feel I have crossed an invisible safety line and started a long journey down into a perilous valley, from which only the lucky few will return. Allusions to Lord of the Rings perhaps. However the lure of the distant shrouded hills and the threatening snow clouds is too strong to give in to. Yet I am warned. It is January, the longest month for many. I haven’t seen a soul so far. It is Sunday and the weather is foul. As I wind my way in and through the Assynt peninsula I imagine I won’t see anyone all day.

The absence of presence doesn’t bother me: I have many a voice in me and like to dwell in possibility. Being alone with the landscape is enough to let my imagination roam. This landscape has a personality very much of its own; it alerts me to its fury andits power as the sleet lashes on my windscreen. I pull over with quiet panic, wondering if I should have checked the forecast. Usually I would pay no attention to forecasts (they tell you what the weather it is going to be like, but not how it feels). If they attributed adjectives and said the weather was friendly, mischievous, tireless or unwelcoming perhaps it would paint a better picture.

Onwards from my musings: I am here to soak in these wonderful characteristics. I set off again to find a place to draw. Getting to know the landscape is a mysterious hunt and will perhaps always remain elusive. Yet it is as perplexing and as intangible as any other relationship. The dark hills forbid yet entice. The thin light on the water is fragile and uplifting. Softening light at the end of the day unifies landscapes to a single texture and quilts its harder edges. It is a fascination for these transient beauties of the landscape and the weather it wears that will forever inspire me.

The drive is stilted, with stopping and starting, pulling over at the passing places to look, but there is no one to pass. As I draw, the filmy hillsides in front of me unfold and re-fold with the changing light. The shifting clouds reveal enticing textures and colours. The glistening edge of the black road ahead becomes excitingly more mine. I carry on.

To romanticise the landscape would be an injustice, but asI get older I realise it is not about the sublime. I like to journey through and experience the invisible treasures just as I like to translate what I discover in paint. My work suggests, echoes and distils the ideas I take from experiencing things; the feeling of being small and the human ability to see the bigger picture; the vastness, the possibilities and the micro detail that contain human histories and memories. It is a balancing act of memory and emotion, the form of the land and the cloaks it wears at that moment.

Planning on coming to Assynt, I thought it appropriate to bring as my travel companion a rather large book of poetry by Norman MacCaig, as well as a smaller book by a devoted fan of his, Andrew Greig. Norman’s poetry, now that I am back here, has come alive, and the novel At the Loch of the Green Corrieis a wonderful account of the times spent enjoying the land in the footsteps of Mr MacCaig. In the latter I came across a passage that at first I couldn’t quite grasp, but which over time has come to mean more to me by way of helping make sense of my own ideas in paint.

‘The natural world is not like something else nor a metaphor for anything, to name it is to lose it. And yet this is what we do. The figurative language restores the world to us. The rose bush is not a pirate and Quinag across the way is not a huddle of anvils but my God we smile inwardly and picture them anew’. Andrew Greig

I trundle on, smiling at the angry river and the lonely hilltops, and wonder how to paint them. Perhaps like the weather I can postpone making up my mind until I am home.

Year Marker Series

Love, Death and The Change of Seasons

Robert Graves’s famous statement ‘All true poetry is about love, death or the changing of the seasons’ comes to mind as I tip toe my way through early spring and new ideas. A fresh body of work, like a poem or painting, allows the artist to shed old thoughts and theories and explore and see new things in a new way.

This process requires time, as the thoughts themselves need space to sink in and seep through. Hopes and expectations have a strong influence too as these can both shape and hinder my focus simultaneously. It is a liberating, frustrating and experimental process; I find that it is often the surprises and the fresh discoveries that end up being the catalysts for new paintings. Drawings and notes are made in my sketchbooks, photographs are taken for documentation, and tentative exciting beginnings on canvas.

I have been engrossed with the relationship we have with nature and how happenings within each year can shape our idea of time, place and sense of self. ‘Happenings’ I use as a loose term for the things we see and experience in our time spent being in the outdoors within our allotted 365 days. We associate March with winds and April with showers for instance. I find it interesting that once I notice nature is testing my rain dodging skills in the fourth month, in cements me in time for a moment or two but also in a bigger picture within nature’s almanac.

The first echo of a cuckoo on a clear, warm afternoon in the hills will always be told to another and may make for a story, creating a time frame and a relationship which goes back and forth. The first time a woodpecker visits your garden. Perhaps not the first, who knows, but spotting such beauty makes the moment even more special: it is your moment, to be cherished and then be shared with others. The first sight of the returning swallows, your swallows (because of course they return to you), which you have come to know so well over the years, or think you know. Black buds of the Ash growing blacker against the brightening sky and the brave sense that dusk is a time to be enjoyed and not tutted at.

Realising the beauty in the old familiar and seeing it again as if for the first time happens mostly at the changing of the seasons. It makes us stop and count our blessings once more.

Spring is the season of renewal, the dark time of the day quickly retreating. It’s as if we have slept all winter and we open our eyes for the first time for months, and start seeing, sensing, smelling, hearing and feeling again. We come up for air and we desperately try and grasp a tight hold and try to imprint these moments on our psyche and our being, as if we may never experience them again, as if in fact all is dying and we really do need to remember. The irony.

Spring rolls into Summer with blurred edges and green delight and Summer into Autumn with the note of the first chill, exhilaration of the shifts of light and fiery leaves, yet I have observed that Winter arrives with force and a frown despite the beauty of the rain sweeping and clouds building. The air has less scent in winter, apart from the frozen days when the exhaust fumes catch your throat or when the wild sea spray smells of salt. The light can be shallow and fragile creating a riot of worrying greys as the fallow fields sleep.

Year Marker Series has come about as a result of needing to notice the details as a way of slowing down time. Marking, remembering with paint the firsts of the year seems to have become my muse for now; as the light tries, the air yellows, the rivers darken and sparkle and the greens lift and sing. There will be more firsts as the days and months, clouds and sun move on. Perhaps it is all about love, death and the change of the seasons. But for me I like the challenge of expressing it through paint.

The Journey

Echoes have a habit of repeating

Days do the same

Listen first; change your sound

A new ribbon weaves its way

As artists we all strive to find our voices, our mark. It is what makes us who we are and gives us our identity. Over years of practice there has been a constant self perpetuated drive mainly because of the need and want to improve and find the perfect way of expressing what I want to say in paint, which I hasten to add is often in flux and changing which makes the process even more difficult. If it was easy I often wonder if I would paint. When I finally find my language that feels right for that moment it feel like nothing else matters. It perhaps can be thought of as a kind of mediation, the mark making and paint flow, the colours mix with ease. It’s perfect.

Keeping the work fresh and free is vital to the essence of my paintings but also to my spirit. I find myself imagining the places I have been and how I reacted to them at the time, and when clear in the mind it seems a natural instinct to be able to paint but once the memory starts to fade it seems so easy to repeat and echo. So I look for inspiration again, which comes in many forms listening to music, reading, writing and music but the core to it all is the landscape the rivers, mountains, moors, field and coastlines which seem to conjure something within me and makes my blood run freely once more. I have always needed the sky and the fresh air. Having spent many hours in the Lake District hills growing up, the outdoors especially the mountains feel like home to me. It never fails to amaze me what the human body can do and where it can take us, how we can walk for mile upon mile exploring wild hillside and tops and in so doing see the most amazing cloud formations and experience awesome weather in the real sense of the word. Landscape will forever inspire and energise me.

The idea of journey is foremost in my mind just now as I start a new body of work and wonder where it will take me. Having visited two major exhibitions recently by artists Joan Eardley and James Morrison whom I have always turned to as my guilty pleasure it has reminded me once more to find my own language. It is a delight to see such wonderful works and it’s great to enjoy and be spurred on but it makes me realise that you have to look forward and find what is real to you.

Whilst this is easy to say I feel strongly that there are definitely forces against me in this process, our fast lives, the bombardment of news and the frenzy of social media interruptions, and the diversions of business can all put your mind set off course and make you question what it is you are doing and why you are doing it. I imagine it is the same for most artists but I know myself that this is the part that makes me, me. If it weren’t for the struggles and uncertainties I wouldn’t have to try and push and work through and strive to make the next painting fresh. And so it goes.

It is often the pieces that are then made soon after or during this process that are the most poignant. As with the change of the seasons the moments most noted are the ‘in between’ paintings. These are the pieces I feel hold the most tension and meaning, the green shoots of late winter waiting, the nostalgic last leaf on the tree. Paintings poised to become more and to take on a life of their own.

I grow shy...

...when I am painting; it feels self-indulgent, a diary of fleeting personal experiences that solidify on the flux of the easel. My practice of painting is as fickle as the wind that blows between the mountains I portray, as arrogant as the imposing rock faces and as immersing as the play of light on water, it is addictive. I am the thief, the arboreal mistletoe; I take from nature in a gentle way. Stealing that moment of artistic creation gives me my freedom, it stirs and mixes the senses inside me like paint on a palette. Therefore Landscape is too small a word for what inspires my painting, because, it is less about the strict visual observation and much more about my individual exposure to the environment, in which I find myself immersed, and the memories that the exposure elicits.

So I attempt to translate the personal, spiritual vision of this distilled essence into a fabric of form and colour. From my belief that each of us perceives and interprets nature in a unique way comes the liberty not to need the approval of others to validate my art. Yet somehow, I yearn to know that others understand the way I experience the world. It is that lust for the harmony of experience that drives my love for art and my compulsion to paint.

Of course there is always a story to tell about each of my canvasses but this tale is ill served by extended prose. Words merely distract from the instinctive perception of the mind and therefore sap the strength of the work. The energy of my work arises not from the vibrancy of colour but from the very instant in time, the now of the moment, I reflect not the harsh single emotions of hate, lust, fear, but more the blended emotions of daily life peppered (veiled) with utopian ideals of romanticism. The natural hues of greys and greens have an intrinsic honest beauty for me, and there is a euphoric feel to bright yellows and blues. Often I find there is beauty enough in a single moment to fill a whole day. Wordsworth wrote about the daffodils as though he had never seen them before. He wrote in the joy of that moment but with a nod to the imprints on the soul of previous experiences. For me it is a similar experience, each instant is a unique thing but somehow it takes its reference from the past and yet gives insight to the future. Everything is transient and yet it is impossible for anything to leave no trace or impression behind it.

My work is that lasting trace of those passing emotions, it is about a lack of fear and a confidence of feeling. It is an acceptance of the now and an acknowledgement of the transient beauty, of our emotional brain.