Intended to celebrate life ironically this work has evolved through loss. It is now a time for me to tend at a churchyard, where the departed lay at rest and we visitors place flowers and touch stones with names and dates and sentiments scratched. I have become a participant in a strange melancholic ritual. I place flowers because, connected as significant tokens of love, they also represent all that we are at our best; they are unique and beautiful, they are of the moment. Each time I return to my vigil the flowers have run their course. Withered and gone I remove them and whisper to connect in some gossamer way as I replace a bright new tribute. It is a significant ritual no matter how infrequently I manage it; a ritual to try to fill a void that I have been left.

I am experiencing a universal emotion and now one a pandemic world is suffering. I’ve discovered that we grieve for the tangible but also for a hope or desire, and that when we recall we struggle with a clear vision as the time passes. We recall in fragments…images, sounds, smells. It is a cruel revelation really.

But as a painter it became a reason to use the paint ‘stuff’ to make marks again. Like other artists I admire I have always looked for ‘symbols that carry an emotional charge. The metaphor implying something tightly loaded with meaning, ready to explode’ (Diebenkorn). I work to make something tangible. Paintings grow from an experience, out of a relationship with things or people and the process of making has become a way to validate both. These paintings have happened because it occurred to me that the flowers are another way to speak of, or to celebrate, or to remember what we need to. Sometimes objects, or a landscape are gathered as more fragments. Sometimes simply the choice of flower is the significant value.