Hot Hill, Portugal
Getting up before dawn each day and I climbed the hill to make work; I loved the stillness of this time of day, the anticipation of what was to come and avoiding the punishing, relentless heat of the day.
My fascination and inspiration came from being amongst the extraordinary plants growing out of the parched, red earth on the hill. There is a stark, bleak beauty and toughness that I love. It is an alien landscape to me, one that demands a different physicality to the marks I make, and a palette that reflects the weather beaten, bleached and shimmering space.
By 10.30am I would retreat off the hill and out of the relentless heat. Then later in the afternoon I would return again, as the light faded. It was still hot, but I could hide in the long soft shadows of the trees and bushes to make more work. I liked this rhythm of working, using the day and the light to help me get to know the place; to be alone with my thoughts and materials. Often the studies began with me picking up some of the dry red earth and rubbing its pigment into the paper. This touch with the earth, with its coarse, glowing, scratchy contact on the page, was often the focus I needed to stimulate my response in marks to the feeling of being there.
I brought these studies back home to my studio and used them as my reference as I led the Paint Fit Class. As I unpacked what the potential was in the studies and selected my focus for the paintings my touch was ‘tough’.This toughness was the quality of being there amongst it, the plants and Nature, but it was also an instruction to myself. As I applied the paint; putting on, taking off, organising and layering the marks I was searching for the feeling of the tough tangle, the brutal and the beauty.
June 2024
