When I learned to write long-hand, many decades ago, I remember marvelling at how varied our writing was from student’s desk to student’s desk. I didn’t understand just why each of our handwriting was unique. I didn’t appreciate how our individual brains impacted control of our hands. Now when I look at my paintings I see that same effect in how I use a brush to apply the paint. My paintings have a look that is unique to me in the same way my handwriting is unique to me.
My style is all about trusting my intuition and letting the music guide my movements. There are times though when I tumble down the rabbit hole of control and my paintings start getting tight. While I admire those who paint realism and who spend hours with tiny brushes striving to make the details work and while I admire those who can take a reference photo and create a painted duplicate, that’s just not me. I want to be bold and spontaenous. I want to splash the paint on, move paint around with my fingers, lift layers with paper, use a brayer to roll paint on the surface and I especially love to negative paint to build a shape out of the layers below.
None of the above experiments from summer 2025 represent my current body of work, yet in their own way they have each influenced works that have followed.
So that’s where experimentation comes in for me. Experimentation is at the heart of my artistic creation. It’s all about playing. I need to play, to experiment, to grow as an artist. New surfaces, new materials, new combinations of materials, new techniques, new colours, new, new, new. It all gets me so excited.
When you experiment it is as much of an intellectual process as it is a creative one as for playtime to be useful to your development as an artist you need to try to gain some understanding of how an effect is created without trying to control the effect and just let it be.
I have a cupboard full of playtime work. Studies on paper and canvas where I’ve tried some idea that has popped into my head. Sometimes I’ll play for just a morning, other times I will spend weeks exploring. Then when I get serious again, some aspect of the playtime will impact the next painting. I think that is why my body of work is a like looking through a kaleidoscope – there are slight shifts from one painting to another while at the same time they all look like my work.
There’s an added satisfaction to taking an experiment and then using it on a product.
TRUE STORY