Cornwall - A Force for Renewal

July has been a very restorative month for me so far, mainly because I’ve been off on a painting holiday in Cornwall and return feeling energised. 

Painting in St. Ives and the surrounding areas always opens up new perspectives for me. Something about the light, the air and being surrounded by other artists helps me to evaluate my direction and take decisive action on how to move forward in my art practice. 

In my earlier years as an artist, whilst studying for my degree in Fine Art, my approach was much more conceptual and I experimented with a range of mediums from Objet Trouvé to mixed media collage / painting. I find practising abstract art a very liberating way to express myself and explore the things we cannot see by eye. 

The years in between then and now (for practical reasons), art was almost always on the side line as full time work in other fields and raising children had dominated most of my time. Last December I returned to painting as my first job, so I have had the time and space to practice painting in a very focussed way. My most recent works have become more representational with attention to detail and I think this is mainly down to me feeling the need to hone in on refining my technical painting skills again as I ventured back into art as a full time career. 

However, I leave Cornwall feeling ready to embrace some new challenges and restore a looser approach to painting again. I've had time to practice my general skills but now is the time to start really expressing with paint! I want to find a balance between some of my older more abstract works and my newer works and have lots of ideas about how I might do this. I just can’t wait to get started! 

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