Drawing: After training in Decorative Arts my practice as an artist has been for many years primarily concerned with stained-glass, glass applique and kiln-formed glass sculpture. In this way I’ve educated my eye in respect of pattern, geometry and colour whilst nurturing an ever increasing personal fascination with the concept of translucency. I’ve always looked, literally, through my primary medium. But I began, recently, to find within myself the need to step back somewhat, to consider figurative detail and surface/external impression; if only in order to locate the bridge between the two realms that are translucency-opacity and/or inner-outer.
I believe in the discipline of drawing and am delighted to have returned to the primary practice of my childhood. My style as a fine artist is definitely and purposefully now informed by that background as well as by inspiration gained through my academic post-graduate study of spiritual and philosophical thought. I’m beginning to understand the work of the (visual) artist as visual philosophy; ie. looking so deeply at that which is external to oneself that eventually you start to see some way into and through it. I hope that something of this will come across as I begin to explore and develop a new way of working, a new practise, using paper; exploring portraiture and dress. I anticipate one or other of these two areas of focus will come to the fore at some stage during this year and thereafter, but that symbolism will remain always.
