Gaia
In ancient Greek Mythology Gaia is the ancestral mother of all life. A more modern view is the theory that all Earth’s living things and their surroundings are so closely intertwined that they form one single complex system. This painting does not attempt to take on this amazing view, but for me the image shows a tiny slivver of a mosaic of creatures, vegetation, earth, sea and sky. It reflects the feeling I have as a gardener. Growing food, means I need to work with many things - soil, climate, seed, weather, location, insects, animals, disease- as I try to build a community where the plants I want to grow can best thrive, without destroying either the local or the wider environment. Ecosystems work this out for themselves of course!
Of the River and Beyond
This painting is my take on a wooded river landscape. From my living room I can occasionally see a heron patiently fishing in a small tributary of the main river beyond. Rivers bring life to a landscape, and wooded rivers are especially diverse ecosystems.
The colour yellow, which underpins this painting is for me a very optimistic colour, full of life and vigour. Darker colours express the hidden life of the woodland, and a criss cross of lines reaching out from the course of the river, touch all parts of the surrounding landscape.
Mother Tree
Trees are real enablers of biodiversity, providing shelter, food and refuge for many ceatures.They also have influence over the wider landscape, nurturing plants around them, absorbing and storing carbon while producing oxygen, enriching the soil through their relationship with fungi, stabilising land, and helping to improve drainage. The right tree in the right place can do all this.
My totem mother tree was created from an initially barren red landscape. As the tree emerged I noticed that initial drawings had provided a network of lines that both tied the tree into the soil, and spread its influence far and wide. The image had became cooler, the background was enriched, everything had changed.
Heading towards Spring
I live on the water-meadows of the river Test. Every spring and autumn we are treated to skeins of calling geese flying overhead, as the make for their feeding grounds. All over the planet huge numbers of creatures engage in unimaginable feats of endurance and navigation as they cross the globe in search of the living conditions they need. This painting is inspired by these fragile journeys.
Colours move from cool to warm and dark marks guide the journey onwards.
Reef Life
When UK hosted COP26 in 2021 this painting was chosen to be shown in the main concourse at Glasgow. It’s an image based on the life of a warm water reef. These coral reefs occur in shallow waters and are built by tiny colony forming creatures, who make a hard shell for themselves and the energy producing algae they live with. Corals are sometimes called the ‘rain forests of the seas’ as they team with life, but they are sadly very sensitive to any environmental change.
This painting was built organically, without an initial plan but I knew I wanted the vigour of colour and the suggestion of movement within the form. You may spot the outline of a large fish. He just turned up one day which was nice!
Life in the Balance
I started this painting with three ingredients in mind; water, air and earth. I allowed the yellow light to stream in and the pale blue water to appear. In response to shapes formed by my initial drawings I then scattered dark colours in and around them. Everything on the canvas was then allowed to interact, all elements changing and responding, each to one another.
As I continued I glimpsed a view of a very busy world, and that busy world appeared to be sitting on a knife edge. It gave me pause for thought.