I’ve always been involved with art in some form, including photography, interior design, fashion, drawing and painting. In my recent work, which is leaning towards abstract landscape, I find I’m going deeper and deeper into the things that interest me in my art, in life and what I want to paint, which is throwing up new and interesting ideas. I’ve always been interested in ‘what’s gone before’ from ancient landscapes, cave paintings and the patterns and marks of ‘what has been left behind’ by previous generations, to how the erosion by weather and time have carved out features in the land. These ideas feed into my landscapes and I find I am incorpoating, more and more of the symbols and signs from times gone by, into my work. Living near the sea, I love the constantly changing shapes, patterns and colours of the weather and sailing boats and I enjoy painting these as well.

I now work in mixed media, having previously mainly worked in watercolour. This requires initially building up a number of layers of thick paint, which I work into with different implements to produce interesting marks and scratches. This is how I start, and it’s interesting to use unusual colours at this stage, as they get buried into the painting to be revealed later. Once there is a good heavy build up of paint, I find that by taking away and reducing some of the top layers some lovely surprises and jewel like colours from below are revealed and this directs the painting to the next level. From this point I am influenced by what’s been revealed from below and this will give me ideas on where to take the design of the painting . Sometimes there is a clear way forward and the design is quite obvious, other times it takes many hours of thought before the final piece comes to fruition and I’m happy with the result.

I enjoy using paint and other materials to produce work which has sweeping brushmarks, deep dark depths, patterns of light, colour and strong contrast. Variations in the light areas and surprises coming up through the layers feed into the general ambiance of the painting. In some of the paintings I will add collage, sometimes concealed in the depths of the layers and other times sitting within the top layer, adding colour, shape or texture to my paintings. I usually work on several paintings in a series at the same time and each one inspires and directs the others.

I have had a number of solo and combined exhibitions in various galleries and am an elected artist member of both the Glasgow Society of Women Artists, (GSWA) and the Paisley Art Institute (PAI).  I hope you enjoy looking at my paintings; please contact me using the contact page if you have any questions, comments or would like to buy a painting.

Aileen