2025

NEVER A GAP IN THE HORIZONTAL

loose pigment, sand and shell in oil paint over acrylic layers on canvas collaged with paper and fine linen, 100 x 100 cm

part of a new body of work I am making about Tentsmuir and Kinshaldy beach where I walk my dog once or twice a week, based on a poem I wrote almost 2 years ago (published in Tears in the Fence Literary journal Spring 2023). The text on the painting comes from this poem, which starts like this –

here at tentsmuir

there is only the hackle of a hole where the wind blows never a gap in the horizontal
the sea-eagle passes
overhead exchanging beaches forging a faraway helicopter coming
and going
and your holy human heart in your breast widens the sky
holds it in your hand to touch the marrams

text around the edges too, hand written in pencil

painted along the top

I take a pocket-sized sketchbook with me on walks to make quick drawings in, and from these and from notes taken with my iphone camera, a new set of paintings both small and very large is coming into existence. I am experimenting with mixing sand and shell fragments from the beach into the paint, or sprinkling it over the wet paint, to bring the materiality of place into the paintings. I want to explore the idea of belonging and spiritual release through the experience of nature in that mix of paint and the material of the land in my work.

 

 

WAITING FOR BONNARD

oil and acrylic on collaged canvas, 80 x 70 cm

I have brought my painting materials indoors as the garage studio is too expensive to heat over the winter, and my painting space is squeezed into this room with its french doors. It always makes me think of Bonnard’s indoor/outdoor paintings, and this is a reworking of one of those I got stuck on a year ago. Really happy with how I resolved it, with Bonnard’s help. I have been loaned three marvellous books on his work, two of them from Paris museums. Also there is about to be a show at the Ingleby gallery in Edinburgh connecting some of their painters with Bonnard’s influence, so I was inspired to paint my own versions.

PARADISE LOST

Oil and acrylic on collaged canvas, 61 x 61 cm
I am continuing to paint the garden and will be making a range of sizes, zooming in on various elements like this table with the bonsais. I painted it from a photo I took out of the kitchen window at the end of September, when I had Covid.