Beginning with my weekend forays into Mulmur with my mother and a dog for company, watercolour en plein air painting afforded me quick studies of my favoured world…non-concrete, non-linear and infinitely beautiful landscapes, intimate and vast.

I still cannot get enough of the inspiration afforded by light and shadow, bulky boulders, lace and tracery of plants and trees.

Watercolour has diminished in popularity in the last few years in favour of acrylic and oil mediums, both for established artists and for students. This astonishes me because watercolours have a vibrancy and inner light that are unparalled in any other medium. It is equally expressive in high realism and abstraction and every taste between.

Watercolour also lends itself to expressive mark making and drawing and can be pushed and pulled in many different directions not afforded more plastic mediums.

My restless soul is attracted to exploration and the intimacy and quickening that leaps off the paper and beckons me further. Sometimes there are disasters but more often a happy discovery appears as if by magic. Watercolour is like that: if you let go and let the pigment and paper do their work, a truly fabulous passage can happen despite yourself.