“Time stops when I’m painting.”
The act of squeezing out the paint with its delicious colour and texture affords me a visceral pleasure, anticipating the potential discoveries lying ahead. I have drawn and painted my whole life, but in the past few years, I have had more time to develop my work since retiring from an all-encompassing teaching career. Colour is my main stimulus; I surround myself with it in my clothing, my home, my flowers. I love doing figurative work, often because I have a close connection with the people I paint, which I find to be essential in portraying their essence. I am also drawn to the vibrant energy of Hong Kong’s street scenes and have developed a series of works around them from my travels there. I embrace the unexpected, and so the random nature of visual surprises in alleyways and lanes excites me. I enjoy using acrylics and pastels, but lately have reawakened an old relationship with oils, which is represented in most of my current work.
