Back to the Roots!

There is often so much discussion about how fragile and delicate pastel paintings are so I'd like to wade in with this .......!

This is a piece from the beginning of my third year at the Glasgow School of Art. This pastel work was done as part of a summer project, painted plein air in my then home town of Troon. At the local harbour there was a ship wreckers and I spent the summer sketching and painting there. Being A0 size (85cm x 119cm) it was a humongous amount of hauling around and that was only the start of an epic journey which has taken 35 years. The painting (which shock horror, was sprayed with hairspray to fix it) has lived in drawers, been shuffled around in numerous portfolios, shoved in and out of plastic sleeves (static), carried around Milan, London, Edinburgh and Glasgow, been hung in exhibitions, transported (unframed) to Germany where it hung directly behind glass for 5 years, had 8 moves all over Germany (was nearly thrown away!) and has languished in various cellars and attics and taaaaadaaaa, it is just about as fresh the day I painted it. For me, a very personal tribute to a medium that I love.

Maybe you've popped into my website and read how I came to choose pastels as a medium, if not here we go! I always have wanted to paint and draw and my mum who also liked to sketch was given a box of pastels. The sticks fascinated me and frustrated me at the same time; I wasn’t allowed to use them! Mum plittered around with them but as they were a portrait set the scope for experimentation was limited and they landed in the Bermuda Triangle of unused art supplies (the bottom drawer). Eventually, I was allowed to use them but before I got the chance we were taken to the Kelvingrove art gallery in Glasgow with the school. I chanced upon a room full of Impressionist paintings and was mesmerised by the intense and glowing colours; Degas ballerinas and racehorses. At the time it didn’t click why I was fascinated by the intensity of colour, they were pastels! Since then I've been hooked.

The lovely thing about my the chain painting above is that most of the pastels on that work were from mum's portrait set!