Artist statement
Welcome to my hillside studio overlooking Findhorn Bay and the Moray Firth. Inspired by local landscapes and seascapes, I love experimenting with expressive mark-making - using a wide range of media, including acrylic, oil, ink, pastel and watercolour. I often add texture with crackle paste and shimmer with gold paint and gold leaf.
Extended Bio
I've spent much of my life within sight of the sea, and the sea is probably my biggest inspiration. I was born and brought up in a coastguard cottage overlooking the Solent, and for the past 25 years I have lived in NE Scotland, in a hillside cottage with panoramic views of the Moray Firth and beyond. The local landscapes and seascapes (especially around Findhorn, Hopeman and Burghead) inspire most of my work.
I've always painted, but only came to focus full time on my own painting in about 2010, after a long career as an editor and writer, specialising in writing books on art history. My many books (written under my maiden name Welton) include Monet, Impressionism and Looking at Paintings for Dorling Kindersley.
I enjoy experimenting with different ways of painting the same motif - I am not really interested in creating an accurate representation of what I see, but rather in evoking the experience of being there. Working mainly in acrylic, I tend to work intuitively, building up layers, adding glazes of acrylic paint and ink, using a variety of tools such as brushes, palette knives, brayers, silicone wedges and even twigs to apply paint and scratch back through. I love creating expressive marks, and often flick and spatter liquid acrylic on to the surface to recreate the energy of breaking waves and the flicker of sunlight. I also like to use molding paste and crackle paste to create texture, and often add shimmer and a bit of mystery with gold leaf and metallic powder.
