I have been painting for over thirty years and studied Art and Design at Norwich City College. I am now happily settled on the Norfolk Broads and have a studio in the garden.
I have developed several different styles during my artistic career ranging from painting in watercolours and pastels through to acrylics and using print media. My work is always colourful, and I am now exploring collage and monoprinting, very often combining the two.
My collages are made from original monoprints, other printed material, newspapers, and sometimes textile fragments. I make the acrylic monoprints in batches without any idea of what they may be used for. Some (not very many) are kept intact to be framed. Others are cut or torn in a random or pre-defined way and reassembled on paper or board to form an image, which is generally semi-abstract. The composition or subject matter are very often undefined at the beginning but arise organically, as I work with various prints and papers. The process is quite time-consuming, and quite often, I spend some time searching for the perfect piece of paper to finish the collage.
My inspiration comes from many subjects, and in thirty years, I have gathered reference material from many different countries. A sketchbook always travels with me. I also collect printed material such as leaflets (especially from galleries and museums), bus tickets, menus, paper napkins, etc., etc. for later use. I have recently used a sketch from my sketchbook dated 1997. Both the sketch and the developed collage are shown. In this case, it’s a fairly literal interpretation. Also shown is a collage using textiles and wallpaper, completely from imagination. There are also many stages of abstraction in between. Sometimes whilst searching through collage papers, a particular piece will trigger a memory, a place, or an idea, and I start to rummage in my collection of papers for reference material and build on this to create a collage. No sketch or bus ticket is ever too old to use!