After graduating from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, I started and ran a mohair weaving workshop in Lesotho for six years. In 1971 my family and I moved to London where I studied under Cecil Collins as well as attending life drawing at the Royal College of Art and The Prince's Trust. From 2008 I have been studying with Robin Child at his Art Research Centre in Devon.
I have accompanied my husband on his many trips to different parts of Africa, where I painted and drew the African landscape and people. This culminated in a series of desert landscapes which were exhibited in Guildford and London.
My work is about finding and exploring, not about representation. I believe that a drawing or painting expresses a reality that is not a simple reproduction of the person, object or landscape in front of one. It becomes a translation into something other than the original source of inspiration, but hopefully at the same time is suggestive of the original. It will often have abstract qualities that are found in so-called reality. It was Morandi who once said "nothing is as abstract as reality".
I am fascinated by the spontaneity found in the drawings of very young children. They have a quality of concentration and absorption which is not bothered about accuracy and yet paradoxically uncannily accurate in what is conveyed. To be able to find again something of this same quality, but with the added experience and training of an adult, is for me what this search is about.
Exhibiting at:
Cricket Fine Art – www.cricketfineart.co.uk
British Art Portfolio – www.britishartportfolio.co.uk
Llewellyn Alexander – www.llewellynalexander.com
Kent Painters Group – www.kentpaintersgroup.co.uk
Florum – www.florum.co.uk
Forton Fine Art – www.fortonfineart.co.uk