Waves

The sea triptych of paintings were made in 2004and represented a return for me to painting after a period when my time was consumed with the business of textiles and hand made production. Painting feeds my need to connect with the inner creative world, the thoughts, fears and desires below the surface. I started with an idea of wanting to paint the sea; the waves, but I had no idea waht the result of those paintings might look like.

The first was an idea of being above the sea and looking down at light choppy waves, like a bird or a gull.

The second just happened and surprised and even shocked me, it felt like something experienced in a dream, it unsettles me still when I look at it, unlike the first where there is a safe sense of distance in this one you are inside the water and the waves appear to threaten to immerse.

The third of the three which I think of as "Nightwave" is taken more from a distant viewpoint and has something unreal and magical. I love the way this piece combines something that could be threatening, frightening, with the beautiful and wondrous. It makes me think of facing our demons and fears and going beyond them.

Initially I had thought about Virginia Woolf; "To the lighthouse and "The waves", also my childhood minutes from the Solent in the south of England. Then of the grand masters, Turner, Gericault and my greatest passion of all in the music of Beethoven.