Abstract watercolours (May 2018 – present)

Following a period of emotional upheaval in May 2018, I found myself drawn to watercolours.  The first attempts were very frail, tiny touches of brush into water, onto almost-scraps of unprepared watercolour paper.

With no formal training, my explorations were based on pure instinct.  A connection of emotion, colour, water and brush.  No thought took place.  Over time, I chose only fire colours.  There was something about the colours of red, orange and yellow that drew me.  One day a newly painted work blew across the balcony.  The painting took its own shape.  I was entranced at the encounter of water, wind and fire – the fire colours, the watercolour paint, the wind.  Later I realised the roots of the history of paper, through even the very beech tree that stood across from me as I painted.  The unity on the paper of water, wind, fire and earth entranced me, as it does still.  I felt a profound and deep connection within the process, and an almost allergic aversion to the imposition of technique.  I was not looking to become an approved painter of watercolours.  I was exploring something raw and wild and elemental of myself, discovering a deep unity beyond words.

The story of each work is each time exactly similar, and unique.  A process of accumulation takes place within me, I become conscious of an incipient desire to create, I wait, taking time for everyday chores, or thoughts, or whatever is there before it is there.  I may get the paper out, alert and ready, and the water, and the brush.  And then there is a moment, a crescendo of paint, and I work very very fast, spontaneously, darting and pushing here and there with my brush, and another and another, perhaps a splatter of paint, and then, is it finished? is it finished? And suddenly it is.

And then I look at the work.  I like the work most instinctively when it is wet and raw.  Sometimes I get disappointed as it dries, often milder seeming and quieter than it was within me.  But my paintings hold more wisdom than I know, and very often, over time, they teach me.  Perhaps they tame me?  I am still learning.

Sometimes the watercolours later find themselves married with words.  The addition of text follows the same path as the painting.  Words are formless, forming, formed, getting ready to be born, to effervesce onto the paper.  And then suddenly, in an overflow of handwriting, they scrawl onto the page.  And rest.

Unlike the painting, the handwriting is very old.  I have written a daily journal now for over twenty years.  I write longhand in carefully chosen books.

The painting is fresh but the handwriting is ancient.