Spirit Of The Moor

My work is a statement of my feelings and emotions for a given place or event. I love wide-open spaces and big skies, the levels and moors being my inspiration. I do not want to depict them but want to express my feelings for them, and create work that can be, felt. I aim to invite you into an inner world, reaching beyond the material into the realm of the psyche, giving the viewer a notion of peace and hope. I use mark-making as a way of connecting the viewer and evoking a response. My work is often described as emotional and moving.

I live and work in Somerset and spend the winter months on the moors and levels, wondering and sketching, loving the freedom, and imbibing the essence of the places I choose to stop and sketch in. These sketches will form the basis for the work I will do in the coming year. 

Working in oils, I spend many hours mixing colour to achieve the palette that expresses my emotions for a given subject, be that a place or event.

Our lives are made up of millions of tiny moments, both positive and negative. They appear and disappear, triggered by a word a moment in time, a colour, a place a smile building layer upon layer. This is how my paintings are built, layering, and glazing the paint influences the paintings' outcome, each layer building, a picture of memory and experience. The work is a conversation between me and the materials when in progress, and then between the finished piece and the viewer, who will then bring their life experience to the work.

'In swirling clouds of silver lace
The disk of Luna lies concealed
Across the Autumn skies they race
Over this shadow realm surreal.

On evening shadows now, I gaze
A gentle wind swirls through the trees
From depths of sleep, I watch half-dazed
Thin branches stirring in the breeze.

Lights flickering neath mystic skies
Through gaps in trees, they shine within
Entranced, my mind, I watch surprised
This spectral beauty in the wind.

In these dark shadows, spirits drift
Translucent ghosts and dryads old
From this meadow, I sense their gift
Strange stories from the wood untold.

Oh let me join thy sylvan fest
Pale spirits of this Solstice night
Before the Moon sets in the west
We'll revel neath her misty light.'
Sharon, MA

I use oil pastel, oil sticks, markers, and scrapers charcoal and pigment sticks, newspaper, and graphite to make marks whichever fits the moment

UV protected, Signed on the back. The work is on plywood panel and is ready to hang.

Oil on Cradled Board

76x51cm

Unframed