After the Rain

My retirement in 2010 from being Course Leader for BA Contemporary Fine Art Practice at Hull School of Art & Design has given me the freedom to practice my painting full-time.

During the last nine years my approach to painting has changed and a relocation to the wonderful picturesque landscape of South Devon has challenged and questioned my muse. I feel that the new body of work that has materialised has fulfilled unanswered questions while creating new voids to fill. I now move forward embodied with a new spirit enthusiastically working towards a further series of exhibitions.

My paintings are unplanned and are arrived at through the constant evaluation of each mark and brushstroke, which I choose to erase or take forward.

My working methods use chance and intuition to allow accident to play its part in the shaping of the new and in my recent work the influence of the new colours and light of the Devon landscape is certainly an influence.

I bury my thoughts and ideas in an abstract language of marks filtered through my emotional response to a time, place or memory. The diversity of painting with it's infinite possibilities, is for me, an exciting and fertile environment, and I continue to explore the qualities of the materials to unleash new paths to follow. It is important that my paintings are not literal and remain evocative, and though they sometimes include clues often as vague as a colour, mark, or brushstroke as pointers to their real meanings; these need not be known or understood to be appreciated.

Oil on Wood

60x50cm