Beyond words

I've spent a week writing  my new Artists Statement.  Here's the background.

It's been hard because I've always felt art is beyond words.

I  have themes and colors which change over the years.  The driving energy which comes into each drawing arrives of its own accord.
 I just have to 'clear a space' (remove all distractions) and allow it to flow.

My hope is you'll find something of your own fascinating life story in my drawings and paintings. Something uplifting. Something revealing.  Something healing.

How did it all start?

Many teachers say that what we loved to do as a child colors almost everything in later life. And if we ignore these first passions, well...burnout  depression and serious disappointment can take root.

I started drawing aged three, and have hardly stopped ever since.

In the first small 'autobiographical' wax crayon drawings, I’m a smiling little nurse in a Scottish hospital  ward, surrounded by sick ladies glued to their beds.  Many of these patients  were ladies of the night. Yes, it was the STD ward.  Pre aids and just after penicillin became available, these ladies at least had a  chance to survive. I was taken to visit the ward every Sunday by my 'mother' their doctor. and  their lay preacher.

Adopted by two pioneering women doctors, I was told to be proud of my ‘half’ Jewish heritage. The other half of me is Irish Dutch.

My recent  art has unfolded  in ‘chapters.’

*Nomadic years - paintings from Alaska, New Mexico, Bolivia , Peru, Spain. 1998- 2014

*Expressive arts images - healing cancer 2015 -2017.

*Belalcázar  Monastery – drawings inspired by research into  Spain’s Golden Age -1492, -Sephardic  Jewish ancestors. 2016- 2018.

*Jewish ancestors - drawing and digital images inspired by discovering long lost Lithuanian grandparents. 2018 – .

 

*Sketches and life drawings 1998 – 2019.

My art is serious and I guess I am too, but humour and playfulness always have a way of  slipping into my life. Thank  God !

My new digital drawings are all about playing with line and colour. Using these techniques I’ve come to understand, use, and share extraordinary healing aspects of art.

In drawing, I usually start by mark making.  Then quickly, inevitably, create chaos.  Gradually and mindfully, I find ways to access that energy which doesn’t care about the outcome of the image.

Sacred  world  music helps this happen, especially the voice of Hildegard Von Bingen. 

In 1996, I deleted the words good bad should and ought from my vocabulary.

My life instantly changed for the better. How?

My 6th sense kind of got activated.  My intuition became super strong and synchronicities started appearing everywhere.

In 2006 I started to write a travel memoir -Drawn by a Star - it was  based on my second visit to Patagonia.

'Drawn by a Star' seems to sum up this mysterious energy. It's  a voiceless voices which guides my every move. It's a voice I cannot ever argue with.

Oftentimes the drawing/painting chaos lasts days or weeks or months.

Then suddenly, something amazing happens.  Characters appear -  timeless stories emerge.

People say they see aspects of themselves in my drawings -  parts they don’t usually notice or talk to.

Rafael, The Fauves , Egon Schiele ,Toulouse Lautrec and Scottish  friend the late John Bellamy’s drawings were early inspirations.

I spent 6 years passionately studying art.  First at St Martin’s Art School in London then at Edinburgh  College Art College.

22 years ago equally passionately, I began the process of unlearning.

“There is no discovery without risk and what you risk reveals what you value.”   Jeanette Winterson