This Is Me
The Artist
Art has always been a release for me. It is an amnesty from the sometimes prosaic influences that today’s media attempts to impact onto your life.
I have been involved with art for over 40 years and have completed works in many mediums, oils, watercolour, acrylic, inks as well as pencil and charcoal, but my passion is working with a mix of acrylic and resin.
The main reason is that it challenges me in ways other mediums don’t. It is as if each working piece has a personality, a character that comes to life as soon as you put acrylic and resin on your board.
Coaxing out the pigments, blending in the flows of paint, at the same time allowing the acrylic to freely find its way around your canvas, is the challenge.
There can be a dominance by some colours to take over, a stubbornness, a refusal to let other pigments or flows share its space. On these occasions you need to take control and bring different techniques to the party in order to have an involvement in the painting.
Dragging, blowing, teasing and adding alcohol are just a few of the ways you can suggest patterns or flows to the piece. I say suggest, because the persona that embodies the acrylic and resin, still has a say in the end result, and that’s the beauty of working with these mediums. You never know until it has cured what you are going to be left with.
A transformation still occurs after you have walked away from the piece.
So, on each occasion, on each piece of work, I look for the personality that develops in the painting, and the characteristics it has. Sometimes the stubbornness of that character tries to take control and attempts to dictate the outcome of the painting. On other occasions there is a softness, a fluidity to the process that will allow you, the artist, to dictate on how the piece will end up. However, no matter what the characteristics are, there’s a point in the painting when both the artist and the medium have to come to an agreement in order to bring the piece to its final conclusion.
I have from time to time, given a name to the personality, and have had discussions with him/her throughout the process of the painting. Sad.....yes, possibly, but this works for me.
If I just put a dirty pour onto a blank board and allowed the acrylic and resin just to do its stuff, yes, it would produce a painting. However, I would be nothing more than an apprentice to the medium, having had no involvement in that painting other than choosing the colours and mixing the pour. There would be none of my influences, none of my character or soul in the painting, and therefore, I would not accept this to be a piece of my own art.
Every artist sees a story in whatever piece of art that he or she is producing. Without that vision, the artwork is meaningless, it’s just paint on canvas. There is a reason why that piece of art has developed in the way it has, a reasoning behind how the paint has been put onto canvas that way. There will be many people who will look at the finished piece and see something within the painting that has nothing to do with the artists original and intentional meaning. That is the beauty of art. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” so they say.
When it comes to my artwork, if the viewer looks at the piece and sees not only a work of art that is pleasing to the eye, but is also drawn to looking more deeply into that painting, they will then see the conversation and resulting compromise between the artist and his chosen medium.
This is me
The Milliner
It may puzzle you to look at my site and see a acrylic artist who also produces elaborate headwear. How did this come about you may ask.
Well, here goes....as explained earlier in another section, I have completed works in many mediums over the years. It was while showing some of my paintings to a friend, that they asked if I could decorate an old top hat that they had found for a Gothic event they were attending.
This I did, and handed it over to my friend, who then wore it during a Gothic weekend in Whitby. She had so many people approaching her enquiring where she had obtained it from. It was shortly after that, that I received many enquiries asking if I could not only do top hats, but also, bowler hats, female riding hats, pirate hats, to name but a few.
So 6 years on, I am still producing different types of headwear for clients.
Every piece is unique, and is made to the finest finish.
I have done hats for "Morris Dancing" couples, for Goths, for "Alice in Wonderland", as well as a number of pieces for weddings.
I continue to do this as it gives me a release from canvas and board art, and I get an immense feeling of enjoyment as I transform a hat into an eye catching and conversation provoking piece of headwear.
