Painting Stories
Even though my art has evolved over time I was always a teller of tales. Who lives in this room? What is a person thinking as they gaze out of the window. When I painted these pictures I had to give them a story.
Looking Through
A couple once stayed in an apartment in Porto in the early days of their love affair. The walls had green tiles on. She was torn the entire time between not waiting to leave the bed of her new lover and wanting to sit at the table in the hall that had a blue tablecloth. In the end she decided to sit at the table and eat snacks whilst scribbling in her notebook and making promises to herself to one day write “that” book.
She left the door to the bedroom open so she could view her lover and in those moments, as she looked through, she decided to love them forever.
A View From A Parisian Window
She had lived her whole life looking for words to write. She imagined that if she lived by the sea she would gaze out and the words would ebb and flow. Then one day she looked up from the typewriter and saw that she had a view right there. She imagined herself running free on the rooftops.
In that moment she realised she did not need a typewriter she needed a paintbrush! From that point on she was catapulted from her prosaic life and became an artist, who painted stories.
This is a mixed media painting taken from one of the many rooftop scenes I fell in love with when I lived in Paris. The piece contains metro tickets and other ephemera that I collected our there. I also wrote about my favourite Metro lignes in french in pen an ink on the painting.
A Place to Read
The man who lives here would always spend too long in bookshops, much to the annoyance of friends and partners. He decided that one day he would make a special place to read, a place of his very own. He often thought that in later life he would be able to drink whiskey straight and it would make him feel grown up and erudite. The truth is he much preferred the taste of Ovaltine.
He filled this room with books, all of the ones he had collected over the years, with broken spines and dog eared edges. Each one loved. Each one read. Each one offering an escape to many different worlds from the comfort of his special place to read.
The Red Chair
The woman who lives here is blissfully single. She wears loose dresses and a pair of worn leather slipper she bought in Morocco many years ago. She tends her plants with care and ease. Meals run into one another and she noodles on her guitar an awful lot but never writes a song, even though lyrics fill her mind daily.
She always lights a candle to eat breakfast and again as soon as it is dusk. She yearns for no one. She wants for nothing apart from more olives, always more olives.
