My Surreal Journey
For years my art practice was largely drawing in pencil, Indian ink, etching and copperplate engraving, using my sketches from observation as my reference material. My work changed direction however in 2021, when I undertook the first Pure Arts Group on-line foundation programme, where I rediscovered my passion for oil painting; starting my current series of surreal paintings from imagination.
Initially, I was challenged to paint 4, which then grew to a minimum of 20 as I really found my voice and embraced this new genre.
It felt like I had returned to my teens, when I often drew from imagination, however now with the added benefit of many years in the interior architectural design profession influencing my work.
I feel that this has brought together all of my creative backgrounds, with play, memory and my love of drawing. I work out preparatory sketches for each painting and each picture evolves as I work on them, mostly using intuition. As this work comes from my head, I don’t feel that I have to go anywhere now and have to ensure that I don’t become a hermit. Thankfully, I have my lovely very friendly dog Denby to get me out and about everyday!
During the Covid lockdown period, I did 110 daily sketches (which can be found on my website) and watercolour was creeping in more and more, which in turn started to appear more in my big Indian ink drawings, so moving back to oil painting and using colour felt like a natural progression for me. I love mixing colours.
My surreal inspiration comes from artists such as Magritte, with the randomness of objects and scale in my artwork and it has been a real bonus not having any deadlines to produce all of the paintings for a specific exhibition, because it has allowed me to improve my painting technique, to naturally grow and to let the work evolve over time. My whole professional design life has been working to “super urgent” deadlines and I was keen not to have this in my art world.
In fact, I am at a stage of life where I have largely cut out urgent stuff, which would add stress and stifle my creativity.
During the 3 1/2 years of my surreal painting journey, I have had to fit it in around my paid design, curating and life but I have now exceeded the minimum target I set myself for a solo exhibition, so we are now starting to plan for this for next year.
One important bit of advice that I would give artists is to always use the very best materials they can afford and avoid compromising one’s work, which will add to the enjoyment of the whole experience of making art. I use Michael Harding oil paints, which have much better pigments than the cheaper alternatives, and I find that it goes much further too.