Partridge in a Pear Tree

For me painting is a way of accessing, expressing, and sharing that magical part of consciousness where the experiences of daily life and those of night-time dream-life, the soul-food of stories and the yearnings of the heart, and the sense of deep connection with nature, somehow knit together into personal myths and visions that are the riches of my inner world.

At times I have an image in my head before I start a painting, other times I have no idea what is going to come out. Even when I do have a preconceived plan, things rarely turn out quite how I expected. My creative process seems to have a rhythm and a plan of its own, it's not under the control of my intellect. It's much more deeply connected to feelings; I paint how I feel, and painting helps me understand my feelings better.

I paint in oil, and also in mixed media, using acrylic and oil pastel over tissue-paper collage. Using tissue-paper collage is a quick way of achieving a highly (but randomly) coloured surface, and images suggest themselves out of the colour-chaos in a way that is sometimes surprising and delightful, and quite different from painting from a pre-formed idea.