I am a fine art abstract landscape painter working in oils and acrylics. My work has always been influenced by the natural world, from the tiniest glimpse of colour in a fleeting glance of a view in the countryside, to the more monumental structures of rock formations, cliff faces and ancestral traces in the landscape. The sea is an ongoing love within my work, from the open expanses of blues and aqua, the sounds, the smell of salt and seaweed in the air to the found jewels in rock pools.

At every opportunity I like to travel to the coast, Cornwall, Devon, Wales, Crete, India braced with a sketchbook and drawing kit to hand. I like to visit places in Britain, not at the height of the season, but during the cooler months when the weather is rawer. Somehow this makes me feel closer to the environment, the elements tearing at my hair and face, the coolness of cold sand on my bare feet creates more of an awareness to the landscape that captivates my imagination, more alive.

I work in sketchbooks ‘en plein air’ and take photographs as supporting work, sitting outside in the space. I generally have an old carrier bag in my pocket to sit on when it’s very wet! However, walking barefoot across moss or grass, sand or in the sea brings me closer to the inspiration for my work.

I like to capture moments of time in my paintings from all the amazing colours that are found in nature, using them as a spontaneous response to what I have encountered. Generally, my paintings on larger canvases, are not representational by the time I have developed the ideas further from my sketchbook drawings and photographs in my studio. The selection of shapes and colours are not necessarily in the order I first encountered them, the shapes may get repeated, the colour palette will change through the process of making marks and looking at the composition, the balance of forms, lights and darks across the surface of the picture plain and acknowledging my intuition, that inner voice of conversation with oneself.

The process of painting for me is informed, but also spontaneous. I am in the space, but look at things differently, through a dyslexic brain. I transfer forms, placing them in different dimensions to acquire the right composition and loose myself in the world of paint, brushes and palette knives. Texture, the tactile quality of a surface, is of importance to my paintings to allow more depth or involvement from the viewer wanting to touch the surface. I have realised this more as my practice of many years continues.