When I first started writing this BLOG last year I explained how I deal with self doubt and negative thoughts. Of course we all know it (IT) for one reason or another, whispering in your ear .....’Just give up, it’s a waste of time, you’re rubbish ‘..etc, etc. Well, (And I’m hoping it’s just the visual artist gene in me!). I could literally see IT/him, sitting on my left shoulder like a sad little ‘Gremlin’. He’s been chatting to me for years on and off, eating away at my good ideas, encouraging procrastination and over time was making real headway in my brain until one day I started to really SEE what he looked like. Actually he doesn’t have a gender though for convenience I’m calling him a ‘He’ but he did eventually reveal his greatest secret. He has a counterpart, who just suddenly appeared one day completely out of the blue. I even gave this one a name ‘Hero Gremlin’ (HG). Yep, he just jumped onto my right shoulder and shouted ‘Take no notice of him, it’s Great! What is he on about!!

This was a big moment for me as I’d not even contemplated that he / IT could have a mirror image of positivity to encourage me. To give me courage and belief when I needed it. 

So ‘visualisation’  has been the key for me AND now you know what HG stands for in my Blog!

November 2022: 

For months now, I have been working steadily in my sketchbooks. Turns out to be a bit of an ‘eye opener’!

I have always kept a sketchbook on the go, even before I started  training for my Degree over thirty years ago. My sketchbooks which I take outdoors with me, also developed into so much more, especially during the time I was teaching. However, I hadn’t ever kept several going at the same time just for my amusement whilst playing with techniques, composition, ideas and colour in my studio. It started with a square sketchbook, then a concertina one before returning to a larger A3 one.  I’ve now filled three large, two concertina ones and around four of the small square sketchbooks.

What with? You may ask. Well images from my photos and reference material, re-arranged and imagined compositions, collage, colours and design. Ideas for paintings, working solutions, new techniques but mostly imagined landscapes. It’s beginning to feel like an obsession.

Lock Down, which sparked lots of online courses including ones about keeping sketchbooks, encouraged me to re-think how I use mine and so far it’s been a great exercise in ‘insight’,  both into my choice of subject matter and how I really like to create art in general. However I’m not sure if this step forward would have happened, if it wasn’t for two things. An oil painting course with Louise Balaam and a free course that I did with Louise Fletcher. Both courses have really helped me to loosen up my painting, trust in my own abilities and just be myself as an artist.

For years I have been trying so hard to ‘ be successful’, in between teaching, that I had lost sight of my true goal, which is to just enjoy painting/art and let the rest follow. It’s still a hard lesson....I still feel like I’m the White Rabbit out of Alice in Wonderland checking my watch all the time....but HG (my Hero Gremlin) has just whispered in my ear as I was thinking about how to deal with not enough time...

”But you already know the answer....? You know how to suspend time by immersing yourself in your painting.....time doesn’t exist when you’re in the flow.” 

Thanks HG.

2024  ...sees me doing much of the same. Still filling sketchbooks with imaginary landscapes making notes of what I feel works and what to avoid. Not always but sometimes in the middle of this,  I find myself working spontaneously on a new painting. Deliberately picking up a panel and making a start. This is how ‘Snow Drift’ started, completely out of the blue with no preparation. ( view in Latest Work)

So... whilst I’m painting, I’m thinking ..how can I capture the fleeting beauty of snow and how would I feel in the scene?

I visualise myself  ( wrapped up in the cold breeze but with a huge grin across my face ) standing in the afternoons’  half light, in complete silence ( feeling  like someone has stuffed cotton wool in my ears) looking across the ridge at the beautiful glistening freshly fallen snow. I love fresh snow and that muffled empty silence that comes with it, so it’s not hard to imagine.

That’s basically it , just trying to get that out of my head onto a panel....I think it worked so I’m happy with it and just hope others can feel this too as they look at it. 

Time to move on ...though this time of the year just fills me with thoughts of snowy mountain peaks.....( see Sketchbooks)

Back soon...