home | the artists | location
| exhibitions | contact
us
About the Artist | Curriculum Vitae | View Portfolio
I am fifty six years old and have lived for most of my life in
Darwen in Lancashire, a northern lass and proud of it. I am a wife, mother,
grandmother and very pleased to be ex accountant and practising artist. I loved
art in school and throughout my adult life expressed many times my desire to
paint again but apart from an occasional dabble I never seemed to find the time.
My 50th birthday gift from my husband was tuition from an artist and all the
tools necessary to “get out there and do it”. In the years since
then art has taken over my life.
I vividly remember the magical experience of suddenly being able to see clearly
when my myopia was corrected at the age of eleven. As a child, I was an observer
of people, standing on the sidelines watching life going on around me. My improved
vision helped me to step away from the isolation that often affects shy myopic
children and gave me the confidence to reach out to others. I have continued
however to be an observer of people fascinated by the patterns of daily life.
My most recent body of work has been based on photographs I have taken of groups of people attending music festivals. What we see when in the heart of a crowd is a continually changing panorama with a communal link like the thread in a string of beads. There is an implication of separation but also an overall cohesion in the dynamics of groups of people. It is the self absorption and essential isolation of the individual even when surrounded by a crowd which has so many resonances for me. I am also continually aware however of the ebb and flow of other lives around us and our unbreakable connections to others. It is this paradox of separation and connection that I have tried to explore in this body of work.
From the start of this journey right through to the present I
have kept my love of portraiture and the desire to paint portraits. This is
an element of my work which I maintain even while working on larger projects.
I start from photographic references but try to put into my work my own impressions
of and response to the person. How many times have we looked at photographs
and found it difficult to recognize the person we know is portrayed? There is
more to a person that a frozen moment of time in their life. They are a totality
of their experiences, emotions and interactions and we see them as that, we
take in information in a multitude of ways and all of it is filtered, coloured
and changed by the reality of who we are.
Click
here to download my C.V.