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 Artist's Statement Why Does Colour Make My Heart Beat Faster? Why do some colours make my heart beat faster? How can a beautiful line or shape take my breath away? Are not these experiences some of the most delicious parts of our existence? Why are we humans moved by such things? Does the right combination of forms and colours mirror our inner world, resonating with that deeper part of our being that gives us a sense of awe? The Answer? My favourite response comes from a conversation between a Bag Lady (Lily Tomlin) and some aliens in Jane Wagner's play "The Search For Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe" She says: "Intelligence is just the tip of the iceberg. The more you know, the less knowing the meaning of things means." "We stopped to look at the stars. And as usual, I felt in awe. And then I felt even deeper in awe at this capacity we have to be In awe about something." "I decided I would set time aside every day to do awe-robics. Because at the moment you are most in awe of all there is about life that you don't understand, you are closer to understanding it all than at any other time." Poetry in Paint Whether it is a face or a landscape, what is important to me is the poetry in the paint. And paint can be so very poetic. One 'Madonna and Child' painting might be a masterpiece and another just dead paint. Why? The artistry in the brushstroke. With my portraits and figurative painting, my objective is to apply poetic brushwork and expressive mark-making to the subject I am exploring. I work and wait for the magic to happen. Visual and Psychologically Challenging Multilevel Paintings In my new work I combine portraiture with the inner world landscapes of my earlier works to create multilevel paintings that are visually and psychologically challenging with an interplay between abstraction and realism. I am now doing larger canvases with more figures while pushing the psychological elements. This would mean pulling in sometimes dark, sometimes fanciful inner world images. I am starting to push the painterly, looser, gestural playful style of my earlier work while capturing the essence of the individuals being painted. Is there anything harder? How I came to Portraiture and Work with the Figure I came to portrait painting via a rather circuitous route. In my earlier work I would wander around in my inner world trying to find what it was that needed to be painted, painting. I spent several years at an artist's residence where I worked with many great artists. The American artist Suzanna Coffey had a big influence on me. She paints nothing but self-portraits. Portraits were the antithesis of what I was doing. It required looking closely at the 'outer' instead of wandering around in my inner world to find my material. I tried it. It was incredibly difficult. But I was hooked. Over and over again I tried. I was fascinated by how the same face turned out different every time. After hundreds of self-portraits I started painting other people. First I was drawn to the radiance of the skin of the two year olds. Then I explored the sculpted face of my father and his friends. I don't consciously 'think' about expressing the subject. It is better to keep the 'thinking' part of me out of the way so that my intuitive side can be present and the art-making can truly happen. The magic usually happens when I stop taking my art-making too seriously and I allow myself to play. Carl Jung said: ''Every creative individual... owes all that is great in his life to fantasy. The dynamic principle of fantasy is play, a characteristic of a child. Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever come to birth." |