Quick QUESTION and ANSWER...
How do I find inspiration?
I am surrounded by nature,
and that is a huge inspiration for me, not only landscapes and seascapes, but
seasons and the weather. It's been so cold lately, and I can see all my
paintings have a lot of blue in them! I also love the internet for inspiration.
It is a never-ending source of fascinating and diverse art at my fingertips.
Current contemporary artists who I follow include Tim Summerton, the Australian
artist. His work straddles abstract and figurative, and he works in layers,
which gives a wonderful richness to the surface of his paintings. The more
traditional British artist Andrew Gifford I enjoy for his lyrical capturing of
light. His Istanbul series is evocative and beautiful.
How I begin a painting?
My paintings very often start
with an idea and possibly a small drawing. Then I block out my canvas with
washes of colour, I like to be spontaneous, and I try to push myself in terms
of mark making. My canvasses have many layers of paint on them, and spend a lot
of time on the floor having paint dripped and splashed on them, building
texture. I use acrylic paints, decent quality acrylic is highly pigmented, and
fast drying paint is extremely important as it allows me to move forward with a
painting relatively quickly. Choosing when a piece is finished I find hard! I
often have canvasses in my studio for weeks or months, waiting for me to make
that decision.
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