Looking for Light
My painting seeks to share an experience of colour and light that defines beauty and even my response to the Divine.
Aristotle thought that an image or colour being perceived by the visual sense changed us physically, that something of the image became part of us. It's true of nature and music, which can change our mood and therefore, our mind. Why not art? Although a painting stimulates the visual senses, there's something about a work of art that somehow touches more interior parts of us too. Reflecting on it offers an opportunity to reflect on our interior world of feelings.
As an artist, the process begins with my response to what I believe I am seeing. To make a painting, I use this interior response to reflect on a one-dimensional surface with technical skill. What emerges on a flat canvas goes through many filters of perception. Each one redefines the beauty I experience within and directs my expression of it. Externalised, it can then be perceived by a viewer, who responds to it in a way absolutely unique to them.
I no longer own that painting then, in every real sense. I own only the experience of having created it and that is why I paint.
For me, this process even allows me to tap into my sense of the Divine. This is what I am exploring currently having moved from busy London to pastoral landscapes in Wiltshire. And what my Christian faith is inviting me to explore even more deeply. I have been studying Ignatian Spirituality for a year. St Ignatius's approach to prayer is described as "the prayer of the interior imagination", or of the mind's eye.
I have painted little on canvas this year, having moved country and then from London to a new rural home, but in my imagination, I have done so endlessly. A new commission is about to put that to the test. I hope you'll come on the journey with me.
In the meantime, click on the right arrow below to see my Instagram feed. The fourth image shows three of my paintings at the thoroughly gorgeous Purpose Gallery in Mapua, New Zealand.
