New Studio
Athens: 2021
Earlier this year, my partner and I waded through the twin tides of a pandemic and Brexit and moved from London to Athens, her hometown, where she’s been posted for a work assignment. We don’t know how long we’ll be here, but for the first time, I’m living in sight of the sea – my easel now looks over the rooftops of Voula and aptly named Panorama to the Aegean and the tiny islet of Ydrous(s)a, known colloquially as Katramonisi – black island – maybe because it’s so often in silhouette against the bright sea, maybe because in the past when shipbuilding took place along the coast, contaminated water often stained its edges. There’s no record of this online, so I’m relying on snippets of half understood Greek to piece the story together. Just as I’m relying on the advice of locals on finding the best viewpoints out to sea – tucked away behind villas or up high on the dirt tracks behind the city’s outskirts.
If you’ve followed my practice since graduation, you might best describe me as a sea-painter. Yet, until now, I’ve rarely painted sea from life. Though I have created watercolours whilst travelling over the years, the bulk of my work has been produced from imagination. The majority of the gouache works that formed my Years of Dust & Dry series, and the entirety of my Rising Horizon oils came to life indoors, painted without resource material. An ocean exists in my mind’s eye, formed from innumerable trips to the coast and from mentally logging observations over water.
Today, my painting practice is changing, I’m finding myself drawn to capture light on the sea, the movement of water, reflections, the infinite combinations of colours above and below the horizon. I am, for the first time, pushing myself to paint with bolder colours and using quicker marks.