Paintings 2018

In the Summer of 2018 Tate St Ives showed Patrick Heron's work. I also attended an excellent 'Patrick Heron' workshop run by Gareth Edwards at Newlyn Art School where we experimented with Heron's painting techniques. A lot of emphasis was given to Heron's 'pre-cognitive' technique - painting without thinking about it. But I was most taken with his pieces that were clearly inspired by his garden - especially an early painting 'Azalea Garden'. Wanting to capture the essence of our own herbaceous border in spring and summer I borrowed his technique of using vertical marks of colours observed in the garden - but couldn't resist overlaying this with more representational (but out-of-scale) marks inspired by Sisyrinchium, Achillea, Euphorbia and Santolina