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Title - Lettuce and Chicory
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Medium - Oil on gesso
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Dimension - 30 x 24 cm
My work is about finding structure, pattern and a harmony of colour. I enjoy portraiture and landscape but return again and again to still life. I love the relationships and quiet conversations that can be built from the everyday objects that are part of our domestic lives. As a mother, cook and homemaker, these are literally the stuff of my days and I enjoy using them to create quiet moments of grace, pleasure and memory. When I need help, I look to the greats: among them Chardin, Manet, Nicholson, John and Morandi.
I have been an oil painter for the last fifteen years and have had the great fortune and privilege to be taught by some of the most highly regarded figurative painters working today, both in the UK and the Americas. Eight years in the Life Room under the tutelage of Saied Dai taught me to see and to draw. Drawing is still where I go for comfort, enjoyment and problem-solving.
Increasingly, I work on linen panels prepared by hand using fifteenth century techniques; mixing my own size, gesso, primer and ground from scratch. The result, while slow and painstaking, produces a surface that has, for me, an unparalleled beauty and aliveness and which sings with the painting to come.
It is a great pleasure to be part of A Table in Notting Hill. I live and work near Frome, Somerset.
