comIt’s hard to come down from working on your creative vision, to having to think about, bank accounts and all the other stuff that goes with being self employed, and trying to find a balance. I tend to think of this “books and Bills” time as a kind of Hell that I have to survive before I can get on with the good stuff, at present I am resigned to having a miserable Monday, so bring it on, lets open the bank stuff and look at money out and money in(what money in?). OK that’s moan of the day, on a more positive note, I have reached the half way point in my current work, and of a hundred micro panels that I am making, I have completed 50. A really good thing about working small, is that if I get too crabby with admin, I can just pick up a panel and start work without to much trouble. I will show you a couple of my most recent pieces.

gesso micro panel

micro gesso panel

One of the most fascinating things about working on these earth scapes, is the understanding of how these amazing formations occur, wondering how on earth mountains can crease and wrinkle, how  fabulous patterns, such as folds in saline rocks, moraine bands on glaciers, and ripples on dunes happen. Huge cataclysmic forces of nature, some explosive, as in eruptions from the core of the earth, others over millions of years, as in the forces of erosion. It may be that it will be the combination of forces that carves out a landscape, such as wind and glaciation, intense heat and freezing cold, cause cracking and melting. I digress, but my work as an artist is thinking about these things whilst working, some could call it meditation, or getting into the work, but it is at these times that I feel a connection to the subject, deeply involved wih the forms I am creating. The patterns of the earth are I am convinced a deeply internalised part of our psyche, and speak to me on many levels.

5″x5″ tile with gesso relief acrylic and wax

My hands are constantly dirty, and covered with paint, but there is a satisfaction in this, it is the mark of work in progress.

gesso and acrylic on tile

5″ tile with gesso raised texture, acrylic, and sand

I must say that the new year has started off with loads of doom and gloom across the world, however in my studio I can shut all of that out and concentrate on my work. The more that I look at the natural formations and colours of the Earth, the more I am fascinated. I am struck by the similarity in shape between a ridge of mountains and the shape of the backbone for instance, which brings us into the world of macro and micro, salt flats from the earth can look like amoeba or plankton and sinter crusts resemble algae, and lichen on rocks. I have been working on a series of 13cm square tiles, immersing myself in texture, relief and paint, the tiles are to be exhibited together as a larger wall piece, the piece can be flexible in that it can be larger or smaller to suit the space in which it is exhibited. I envisage maybe a hundred pieces, 30 of which have been completed so far. At present the tiles fall into three categories, land, water, ice. I believe that in the depths of a grey and dismal English winter, my studio is a refuge.

13 cm square tile part of “earth series”