Perhaps I should start with the Gwen John Exhibition that is currently showing at the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff. I noticed her small watercolour paintings of chairs painted in church, with children and nuns at the edges. I had begun to include a chair and stool with the flowers in a couple of still life studies. I was interested in exploring still life in the studio as a way to relearn how to hold the brush and move paint across a surface again with these older, stiffer hands. Rusty tools need a lot of work to get moving again. Now, as I write this post, and looking at the two acrylic studies of my old farmhouse chair that became the focus of my latest works on paper - now available to purchase through the website - I can see the roots of that blossoming focus in the stillness of John’s small studies of the chair. Her work has always delighted me, and also her story as a solitary woman, detaching herself from her only family to live a solo life in France, finally seeking out spiritual comfort, where no human comfort was possible. In her final years, she had no lover, no children, no grandchildren but she had her art. She died and was buried in what amounts to a paupers grave and very little is spoken of with regard to her relationships with other female artists and friends. But I digress. This chair quickly became a focus for expression - superceding the flowers that had begged for my attention during the last dark days of Winter.

In these more simplified works, I was seeking movement - not just with the paint but also with the subject. I wanted to express emotion, balance, fragility perhaps. The basic palette for each painting was reworked several times, with previous layers sometimes showing through. The shadows played a supporting role in the painting, offering a sense of place in the space - suggesting falling or landing, tipping or setting right. They are as far removed from my initial studio studies below as they could possibly be - but they were painted with emotional connection and a desire to express the themes of absence, longing, waiting, losing and regaining balance. An empty chair can represent many things and it is a common subject for painters - Van Gogh most famously perhaps, but I had not understood the breadth of possibilities before I had embarked on these paintings. I hope you can see the progess and development for yourselves. I do not offer the canvas paintings of these chairs for sale here as they are preludes to the chair paintings and I am not able to let them go just yet. The paper works are available for an affordable price which I hope you will enjoy for yourselves.

The Chair Series

Living in the shadowlands.