I often find ideas for art projects in everyday experiences, sometimes I’ll just be walking through the Meadows in Edinburgh and I might see how the sun is casting broken shadows through the trees or the unusual patterns in which blown pink blossom or fallen leaves gather along the pathway. Other times I’ll be flicking through the pages of a fashion magazine and find inspiration for a painting. I usually have a camera to hand in my bag and take a lot of pictures, more than I often know what to do with. At the time I take them I might not be fully aware of why I’m doing it, but when I go back and look at them again I often find that there’s something there that’s worth taking further and playing around with. Something unconscious about light and pattern, sometimes this ends up in an item of jewellery, sometimes in a painting.
My work often features the flow and colours of the natural environment, landscapes seashores and water forms. I’m intrigued by the recurring patterns I see in sunlit water, the interaction of light with the surface leading to interesting reflections from the rocks beneath. I know a bit about the science of how light operates but am still enthralled by the magic of witnessing it in nature. One of the images in the Crete series has captured refraction of light on the surface of ripples, another shows the standing wave patterns that, unknown to me at the time, resulted from chance droplets of rain when I took the shots. It’s often those surprise elements that I find most rewarding in making art. Nature is full of intriguingly repeating forms and light dances: the leaves and branches on trees, faces carved by wind on a rocky coastline, wind dappled sunlight over water, the violets, blues and greens of the seashore, the orange and red hues of sunrise and sunset. I like to tap into that and see how I can represent it in my work.
