This new series of works has come about through a slight shift of focus in my work.
I have increasingly become aware of the extraordinary in the natural world I see around me. Often it is the initial insignificance of things that will draw my attention: perhaps a single leaf flashing and spinning, caught mid-air in a web.
Our relationship with nature and indeed wellbeing has become of such sharp focus to all of us of late, especially during the last few years of Covid lockdown and now unpredictable weather conditions that are played out around us.
My interest lies in an experimental combination of challenges, part through the act of painting and seeing, and partly by utilizing composition. Continuous questions of what is important to me as an artists and frequently reviewing where I am in terms of ‘context’, leads me to the inquiry lying behind this series. An acknowledgement of the rich still-life’s utilized by so many of our great artists throughout history and also the high skill of women painters, whose work has often been glossed over.
Botanical forms and motifs have underpinned much of my later work; The work could also be seen as an analogy of life, birth, growth, development, and fading towards extinction, which we share existentially as parallel eco-residents with the natural world. Life can be brief, forceful, transient, fragile, and diverse. These elements I recognize as becoming fundamental to my work.