I shared this painting on my FB page yesterday thinking it finally finished. This morning I’m not so sure. I need to hang it and see whether it hangs peacefully or nags me further. Someone asked me on FB if it was hard to do, due to the words written on it! I’ve been thinking…
Category: Wildlife Art
The Golden Hedgerow
I spent this summer in the garden, painting and hanging out with my ponies. This large canvas is painted using feathers found during my winter dog walks. I am using feathers in an attempt to really draw upon the feel, spirit and energy of birds and in this painting, the buzzing life force of the…
A Delicate Brush
I’ve been painting with feathers on canvas all summer after experimenting on paper with feathers during the winter. Yesterday I sold the first painting of these explorations. It’s alway great to sell as it gives an incentive and boost to keep going. My inner critic gets silenced and replaced with gratitude as the art is…
Feather Paintings – Painting with Spirit
The lovely thing about painting with feathers is I feel a connection with the bird and its energy, its spirit. I haven’t painted many birds, just a few African ones, so am enjoying this new subject matter immensely as I spend the summer observing them in the garden. I am trying not to overwork these…
Feather Paintings – Freedom
Recently I did some research towards a project that got me thinking about what freedom means for children in this day and age, wanting to inspire hope! However my ideas fell on stony ground. ‘I don’t get it’ I was told, and that was the last I ever heard of the project. However, the ideas…
Feather Paintings – Sparrows
I pick up feathers when I see them. It’s a childhood habit to delight upon treasures lying in the grass, delicate remnants of an air battle. Mainly pigeon or crow feathers this winter, signs that the buzzards had dined, but sometimes an owl feather, and the other day on the Clyde Valley Walkway two emu…
For all the ‘Weirdos!’
Here’s the thing! When I went to art school in the early 80’s it was ‘where weirdos go!’ I was regularly told as a teenager I was a weirdo for liking art, dressing up weird and my music choices – ska, blues, punk! And alongside, told I would never make a living as an artist…
Shapeshifter
I can’t seem to decide to paint a thing then paint the thing! I decide to paint a thing and then it becomes a different thing. Unplanned things happen! I wasn’t intending crows but crows became the thing. And here’s the thing – both the day and the art shape shift no matter how good…
Crow Medicine
Yesterday was an up and down kind of day, feeling frustrated that my studio is cold, getting bone cold, yet wanting to paint longer. Late afternoon, sun shining, finding spring-like energy, I decided to paint outside, throw some paint on a big canvas and move my body to stay warm rather than stand in one…
Road Blocks, Art Blocks, Snowdrops
What do you do when you hit a road block in life? Push through? Go a different way? Stop? Ask for help? Do something different? Bang your head on the wall in frustration? Have a cup of tea or glass of wine? Know that ‘this too shall pass’? Get Angry and bang things or depressed…
Mother
The planet is a living entity. It is part of us and we are part of it. We are attached to it. Held on by gravity. It is us. I am it and you are me. I think we have largely forgotten the planet is called Mother Earth for a reason. It is our Mother,…
Down Another Rabbit Hole
I’ve been down a cat rabbit hole this week, if such things exist? Or you could say I have been experimenting on cats – experimenting with using different substrates for acrylic paints. The monochrome paintings are either acrylic on hardboard, or acrylic on a new paper. The hardboard requires layers of paint to give depth….
Remember Remember
Remember Remember the 5th of November, lest a hedgehog get roast to a crisp and an ember! My sister suggested a hedgehog drawing as we draw close to bonfire night in the hope of saving a hedgehog or two from being burned alive. I thought it was a great suggestion. I have a bonfire that…
Call of the Wild
‘Stay firmly in your path and dare. Be wild for two hours a day!’ Paul Gaugin Challenge accepted! I’m using quotes from the greats as my tutorials. This morning Gaugin ignites the inspiration rocket. Staying firmly on your path, keeping your direction, following your star, even being wild can be a challenge. ‘Why are you…
Duck Off!
Duck Off! Acrylic on Canvas, 80 x 80cm Over the past few years a pond’s appeared in the field behind my house. It’s expanding rapidly this autumn which is great for the wildlife but not good for the ancient beech trees on the far side of the field whose roots now stand in water. The…
Mother Ship Paintings
‘The creative adult is the child that survived.’ Ursula LeGuin A mother ship painting is an expression I’ve recently coined. It’s a painting that contains lots of jumping off points for different paintings ie it could spawn it’s own babies aka a body of work inspired by this one painting, thus the mother ship. Here…
Crow Feather
A painting of crows painted with a single crow feather, connecting the bird, the process and the image. Painting with a feather brings a lightness of touch and a freedom yet less control. Engaging to do. This drawing has a presence. I know it does! It’s what we hope for in art – to create…
My Cheetah Heart
Cheetahs and other big cats have been a recurring theme in my artwork – speeding cheetahs, camouflaged leopards, poised lions – alert and listening. The elegance of felines I find utterly beautiful. I love using warm colours to suggest the heat of the African bush. Here is a collection of small paintings currently available on…
Art for Children – Dinomania!
I feel very fortunate to have grown up with real paintings as I am convinced this is how my interest was sparked to learn to paint. I remember spending hours looking at them. When I was asked to produce a dinosaur exhibition for Jurassic Lanark, my motivation was this – what if some of these…
Advent Calendar – 17th December – The Language of Wolves
Wolves howl to display togetherness. Howls are among many vocal sounds canines make as any dog owner will know. My dog howls when the 1pm Thursday siren sounds at Carstairs State Hospital or if she hears bagpipes! Crazy Maisie! The Romans and Saxons reported Britain to be abundant with wolves. Wolves are now extinct here…
Jurassic Art Blip
Time is a weird concept isn’t it? Now, this present, can’t just be a tiny sliver, a knife edge, between the past and the future. Time is vast. Unfathomable. We are not separate from the past and future, but somehow linked on a multi dimensional continuum. Time travels like the light from a distant star….
The Last Tree On Earth
The Last Tree on Earth One dawn this spring I was watching the bronzy morning light on the tree outside my window, half asleep, drifting. I ‘saw’ an image of the last human in the world lying in the tree reaching for the last apple. It was a powerful semi-lucid moment. I decided to paint…
Art of Positivity!
Is there such a thing as a mistake? There’s a philosophical question if there ever was one! Maybe everything really IS always working out perfectly… Sometimes it feels hard to know but loving the artfulness of an attitude of positivity, I would have to choose to say, ‘yes to perfection!’ As Einstein said ‘The most…
Spring – The March Hare
This painting started as one thing and became something completely different. It was inspired by seeing a hare and spring springing in the garden with the first snowdrops and an incredible blood orange snow moon at the beginning of the week. The idea of life’s potential about to burst forth, almost vibrating with energy yet…
Tao Te Ching – Nineteen
Give up sainthood, renounce wisdom, And it will be a hundred times better for everyone. Give up kindness, renounce morality, And men will rediscover filial piety and love. Give up ingenuity, renounce profit, And bandits and thieves will disappear. These three are outward forms alone: they are not sufficeint in themselves. It is more important…
Tao Te Ching – Three
Not exalting the gifted prevents quarrelling. Not collecting treasures prevents stealing. Not seeing desirable things prevents confusion of the heart. The wise therefore rule by emptying hearts and stuffing bellies, by weakening ambitions and strengthening bones. If people lack knowledge and desire, then intellectuals will not try to interfere. If nothing is done, then all…
The Fate of Paintings
Me and the Chinese Ambassador Artists want their artwork to find homes and be loved, For the art to become backdrops to lives and talking points. To be looked at and dreamt into. For owners to see what the artist saw and find inspiration and joy. This is the ideal, but after paintings leave the…
A Bit Medieval
I have been making art to fit frames as the picture framer is closed and I had some antique frames in the studio. Medieval tapestries were the initial inspiration for these paintings and it struck me whilst painting that everything is a bit Medieval at the moment. We are living in the time of a…
Walking into Ideas
My art has become increasingly about ideas! I guess I’ve spent the first large number of years of my life learning how to paint and draw and now I want to express ideas and do more with my art. So where do the ideas come from? Truthfully, I walk into them in the field. The…
How to Paint my Camouflage Style, for 5 Year Olds
I received a request this weekend from a primary school teacher wanting – ‘to focus on a particular artists art and produce a similar sytle with a school art gallery and parental showcase to promote education through art. I love the camouflage style look with animals and cars and was wondering if you can…
‘My Walls are Too Small!’
‘My walls are too small for a big painting!’ It’s a comment I hear a lot and it always makes me laugh. I look at the person and think, ‘What a load of rubbish, you don’t live in a hobbit hut!’ So here is my low down on why ‘my walls are too…
Wonderful World
Imagine an art gallery in an industrial unit? The sort of place you might go to have your car MOT’d! This is Resonate Arts House in Alloa and I love the space! An artists dream in fact – big wall spaces, well lit, run by art historian Clark, whose passion and knowledge of the visual…
The White Elephant and Treasure
The White Elephant, Oil on Canvas, 150 x 100 cm I remember as a 5 years old at a village fete being totally fascinated by something called The White Elephant Stall. Where was the white elephant? And why a white elephant? It was the best stall as it was full of interesting stuff and…
Looking Through Your Eyes
The process of painting is fundamentally abstract – colour brushed onto surface. So why are artists driven to abstraction? What is the motivation? And does a painting gather energy – become real, gain a life force, by being seen by you? Does a painting actually exist if no-one looks at it? I have a…
Slow Cooked Art!
When you have been painting for years you, the artist, are inevitably left with a pile of ‘also ran’ paintings … The ones that were just not that good, the ones that no-one snapped up, or the ones that you turned to the wall because you couldn’t resolve the problem you set yourself by starting!…
Spring Greens
‘Galloping Free’ Oil on Canvas Spring! This past 2 weeks in Scotland for me has been all about green – suddenly the trees have burst into life, fabulous shades of green – bright, fresh, acid, shining, shimmering, vibrant, new green. Amazing, wonderful, startling, inspiring … I was commissioned to paint green and blue elephants…
Golden Firefly and Red Dots
Golden Firefly, Oil on Canvas, 120 x 150 cm Many years ago the famous Zimbabwean silversmith Patrick Mavros gave me some advice … ‘When you hang an exhibition take everything you could possibly need with you! Don’t arrive and then ask the gallery to borrow a hammer or a ladder or a pair…
The Hug
Pig
Speed
Oil on Canvas 120 x 100
Golden Haze
Cheetah Shades
Young Males
Oil on Canvas 80 x 100 cm
The Fight
Oil on Canvas 80 x 100 cm
Into the Light
Oil on Canvas 110 x 110 cm
Bush Diamonds
Oil on Canvas 80 x 100 cm
Strange Fruit
100 x 120 cms Oil on Canvas
Dreaming
Oil on Canvas 80 x 100 cm
The Boss
Oil on Canvas 80 x 100 cm
Guy
Queen
Oil on Canvas 80 x 100 cm
Chameleon
Oil on Canvas 40 x 50 cm
Meerkats – The Line Up
40 x 50 cm
Road Runner
Oil on Canvas 40 x 80 cms
The Leopard’s Tale
100 x 120 cm
Bush Babies
Oil on Canvas 40 x 50 cms
Chameleon
Oil on Canvas 23 x 30 cms