'An ocean is within us, each anticipation stirred by our own selves, our actions, our shelter. A marker of where we call home. Seals swim seen as boats begin to whistle. Nature's rest eases into glorious sunshine, a day of happiness. Smile before the wind blows in once again. The entrance to Fal Bay, marked by Black Rock. '
beetle feet, sandfly hop, saltwater, acrylic, granite, sand, freedom limbs, oak's first leaves and suncream on unstretched canvas
“Painting outside, I work within the bounds of my own body and the conditions of the environment. The paintings are vibrant and joyful, distilling the hum of the place onto a very present canvas.
Relaxing your eyes into them becomes a very bodily experience for the viewer, finding the balance, the depth and the contrast, pulling yourself into the middle of the flux. They invite you to become part of that.
Wildscapes, and these spaces of sublimation are the corners that I chase, those that resonate as ancient, fragile, strong and ever present all at once. The paintings, as brimming vessels to envelop you in this rush of time. They remind you to love these places, and to search for the detail in the season as I echo in my title mediums.
Often painting on unstretched canvas, the bleed of the paint into the corners I feel shares the honesty and materiality of the physical work itself; with the naked canvas inevitably not outliving the plasticity of the mixed media. They may nudge us to remind ourselves of those things we leave behind. To tread lightly. To find ways to bring to the fore the hard to grasp ephemerality of the whole crazy beautiful, that we can lean into like an off centre apex, to lever open this wonder that lies obscured in front.
Walking back from painting in one of these places is often a private moment, the canvas wrapped around my arms like cloaked wings, my arms already bodily exhausted by the work, working hard to keep the painting up. I feel wrapped, cocooned in the piece. Even once finished, the painting is never truly finished until it is walked back after the last session.
Here, for this Black Rock painting, I felt so embedded locally after that first lockdown, it was an important experience to mark the first tastes of freedoms. The feeling of expansion now in place. Of joy, of treasure and respect to this harbour that we call home, that I had walked or run along day in day out for that time. Looking out between the headlands as I had done on a visit to Sydney painting after the fires all those months previously, in a world away. When I carried the painting back through the village, it became a processional thing, an experience witnessed, something to be celebrated. An uncultivated spectacle, the volume began to turn up again. Humans were humming in time with the long Spring awakening."
