I thought it was time to write something as it's been a while and I wanted to see if I could fathom things out about my arts practice by writing about it.
As someone who loves to be creative and to paint as much as I do, I have lots of questions that I am constantly asking myself.
Why do I paint.
How do I make the decisions I do about composition etc.
Why use paint at all.
What is it with Landscape that intrigues me.
These are just a few!
Well why do I paint - it's something I've always done from a child and found it therapeutic and a way to switch off from the stresses and strains of a busy lifestyle. But thats not the whole thing as why do I really paint and miss it when I don't? It must be something innate inside of us, what do you think?
To be honest I've always tried to stay away from thinking about composition too much as my work is very spontaneous and intuitive, but lately I have been thinking about using it to help move my work forward. I've always wanted to ignore conventions and work directly from either the landscape or from the memory of a place.
Oil Paint, Watercolour and Mixed Media are my go-to materials to work with in the first instance, they are easily accessible and the quality of oil paint and watercolour far surpasses anything that I have used in the past. In the earlier days of my art making I would work in the landscape making constructions which would be site specific and then use paint to change the colour of the natural elements, this would in turn inspire me to paint or draw from the collections I had made. So I suppose that paint and drawing materials are at the very top of my list.
Landscape is something that has always been at the very heart of my life, growing up in a rural location it was always around and shaped my thinking. In some ways it is inevitable that this sense of belonging in the landscape has led to my lifetime fascination with nature in all its guises. The sense of ambiguity of form, the sensitivity of colour, the weather in all its forms and the subtlety that this creates in the moods and atmosphere of the land.
Comments