I’m both an artist and an art educator. I was so lucky that as a teenager I got a place at art school and was taught to draw and paint properly by the most inspirational artist and teacher one could ever wish for. Under his guidance I fully accepted that I could draw or paint anything: 45 years later, I’m still drawing and painting, and still loving it. I’m also still using his teaching methods to help my students to realise that they, too, really can draw and paint.
Discovering why those methods worked became my first degree dissertation topic and then a life-long interest. In a nutshell, it is switching you from working in the logical, linear, left hemisphere of the brain that we spend most of the stress-filled day functioning in and moving across to the creative, non-sequential, non-verbal right hemisphere of the brain. I love operating in right hemisphere mode because time can seem to fly by or stand still, it is as relaxing as it is stimulating, and you become so much more aware of the colours, shapes and patterns of the world around you.
Being an artist is a joy and a privilege: I get to draw and paint a myriad of subjects in any media that either I or my commissioner desire from pet portraits to landscapes, flowers and still life to people and the places where they live. Having had the enjoyment of creating those works of art, I then know that when they are sold they go on to give years of pleasure to their new owners. They are now hanging in homes on at least 3 continents!
I am not an artist who stays with just one medium or one subject or one style. Variety is the spice of life and I would never have found out that I love drawing in pastel if I’d only kept to pencil, or discovered watercolours if I’d only kept to oils or acrylics, or found what happens when you blend soft pastels with watercolours as opposed to oil pastels with watercolours. In the same way, I will try out different subjects in different media, hence I (currently) have a preference for doing pet portraits in pastel but people portraits in acrylics or oils. Water is currently a favourite topic (but not exclusively) and I’m enjoying exploring ways to depict it from still to raging white water in watercolours, acrylics, oils and pastels so it is appearing in scenes featuring lakes, rivers, cascades and seascapes.
