Spontaneous Colour Works
Process
These paintings are made purely out of the joy of laying colour down. They arise over many months - where each new encounter -taken in silent prayerfulness - makes space for spontaneous gesture. The work is carried out in faith; that the freedom of the Spirit may operate as fully as possible.
Inner Impulses
- the Spiritual Development of my work from 1997-Present -
As a young student at University I became fascinated by bees. Long hours spent studying and drawing them whilst holding them in my hand brought to me an encounter with the divine and to a contemplation of the archetype of the the bee, and of natural forms per se.
Later, after moving to Wales in 2003, I began drawing the human face. For many years (2003-2019) I drew faces from photographs, but was always aware of the shortcomings of this limited means, and I began to long for a way of expressing the archetype in the face and moving to a form that embodied something more deeper and eternal than a single pose from a photograph could provide. It was at the time (2014) that my partner passed on, and the Orthodox Christian Heyscast monastic life began to embrace me. My Godmother, and iconographer, Elaine Waller, introduced me to the process of icon painting, and I also began to experience encounters with the divinity through the doorway of icons. This completely deflated any clinging to wanting to be a successful artist, and the habit of exhibiting in galleries suddenly felt very shallow and commercial. I was in Love with the richness of LIFE that could be accessed through the icon. Something much deeper than aesthetics was going on - deeper than the image itself. I came to know the potential of the icon as bridge to the unseen worlds, and to the true center of one's being in Christ.
I moved away from a tight copying of faces from photographs to a simultaneous study of the icon, and to free flowing, spontaneous colour pieces which came from my own heart, and now felt more authentic and unforced/natural.
Having leapt into this realm of playfulness and a joy of colour, I am now sensing the emergence of form within this body of light.
The pieces that are now emerging, out of what may be described as ordered chaos... or an 'etheric musical reality'.... (as has been described by a very beautiful friend) are beginning to reintroduce the form but in a way that is fully integrated with the surrounding etheric qualities. Akin to fluid glass figures flowing with the current of the surroundings, or recognisable forms in rocks - where the faces follow the flow of the rock and are part of the whole flow....
