Drawing helps us to really see the world around us all - patterns, light and shade, atmosphere, juxtapositions.
I started my career in a technical drawing office. It took several years of working in various jobs before I eventually exchanged the Friday wage packet in my back pocket for art college. That eventually took me to London where I had a career in graphic design, somehow surviving the desktop computer revolution of the late eighties, and found there was always a need for someone who could also draw.
A good deal of my design work especially in the early days, involved working in collaboration with interior designers and architects on environmental, retail, office design and marine projects. I never lost my urge to draw and paint though, and as time has passed my painting has become more about responding to what I see, when it used to be about describing it, or wrestling with the media!
Drawing helps us to really see the world around us all - patterns, light and shade, atmosphere, juxtapositions. When you look at a drawing years after you made it, however good or bad you think it is or incomplete it may be, it will always tell you much more than a snapshot ever could. The strength of the wind, the warmth of the sun, how cold your fingers were. A few notes accompanying the sketch can help too, taking you right back to that time and place, even decades later.
These days painting ‘plein air’ with oils on canvas is often for me, the definitive statement of time and place. That is not to say working in the studio or in other media takes a back seat, far from it. So much to do and so little time!
