What Art Means to Me

It is difficult to put into words what one expresses through visual imagery. Ever since I was small and discovered the excitement of making marks on paper I have been attracted to doing art. To give an impression of natural and man-made beauty is a real thrill for me. I enjoy capturing the feelings I get when I see an inspiring scene through the medium of watercolour, acrylics and occasionally with other media. Then I enjoy sharing these with others in the hope that they are touched.

I have always been interested in the effect of a pleasing arrangement of colour on one’s sense of well-being. When I was young I was aware of the emotional impact of colour through the medium of oil painting. I tried to learn to paint from the age of eight but was quickly discouraged so I spent much of the rest of my life doing pencil and ink sketches…until one day, many years later, I saw a calendar of watercolour paintings and something inside spoke to me. I was hooked! I started to paint and to take courses in painting. From this my journey began. It eventually became interwoven with the nomadic lifestyle of my family. My engineering training taught me to express every detail so that an object was fully defined. This later on affected my art in a positive and negative way. I leaned towards impressionistic representational painting so the urge to paint detail was one I had to counter as I learned how to omit detail and look for shapes rather than objects to paint. This process is ongoing. On the positive side my technical drawing training has instilled a respect for proportion and the demands of perspective which I enjoy satisfying.