We are broken people living in a cursed world. However we can see the hand of a loving creator in ourselves and the world around us when we look for it. And that is what I paint – in watercolour. I like watercolour. I have decided to stick with this medium, in spite of expert and well-meaning advice to the contrary.
The Creator’s hand is often hidden in plain sight. Some details reveal themselves only with scrutiny. Mia the Jack Russell’s fine, white eyelashes, the small sparkling line of light where a stream flows around a rock or the range of colour in a hand or a stretch of beach. The hand of a creator is also visible in the functional mundane, everyday scenes like the dishes in the sink, plumbing or a paraffin lantern.
An emerging adventure for the future: Even ugliness and pain present topics for painting. We learn through embracing pain. Because painting draws us into a subject we can learn by painting painful topics we can learn.
Life really is an adventure. And the richness of living is reserved for those who set aside the ephemeral comfort of the safe approach to embrace the drama of a life lived at risk. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the world of watercolour where bold colours and wild washes have every chance of failure but every now and then produce remarkable work. This is my quest.
I love painting on site and from life. And I love splashing watecolor washes down, allowing the water and the colour to produce their own magic.
And I mean “love”.
After so many years of colouring within the lines I want my portraits, figures and landscapes, to show this complete and utter lack of fussy carefulness.
