Painting

I paint with water-based mediums to explore tonal colour relationships. My paintings are constructed in layers, mostly from transparent to opaque to give a sense of depth. The delicacy of the first few layers builds slowly to the palpability of the final layer.

The theories of pattern and colour from the Bauhaus are of particular interest to me, especially those of Paul Klee and Josef and Anni Albers. Some of Klee’s most important teaching work was done in the weaving workshop and the quality of the textiles produced is testament to this.

Weaving drafts are a way of coding pattern and colour. Like a musical score, they indicate rhythm, harmony and repetition. They are a system of measurement and structure although this can never be replicated perfectly in the web on the loom. Small discrepancies and irregularities bring life to the work and are evidence that they are made by hand.

Many mosques and Byzantine churches show complex geometric patterns on a large scale. Domes, floors and walls are covered in densely patterned tiles and mosaics that are generated by a simple grid. The composition is stabilised by the vertical and horizontal axes of symmetry which allow the intricacy and rhythm of the pattern to flourish. These axes provide a container for the play between the layers of pattern. Without them the delicate balance between the regular and irregular would founder. Bridget Riley describes this weighing of two opposing aspects as ‘a gentle kind of emerging and receding syncopation’.

Riley, B. (2009). The Eye's Mind: Bridget Riley Collected Writings 1965-2009 (R. Kudielka, Ed.). London: Thames and Hudson.