The Old Burrow

For me, drawing and creating is a soft space.

In solitude and quiet I sink into the Ether, a place where my heart feels at home and somehow the forests of the imagination come into view. I am so grateful for this, and although two decades of drawing and painting have past, I still look at the pictures as though I'm not sure how my hands created them.

My heart is moved by arts and crafts that take time to make. In this fast paced world, there are so few things left that we do slowly and calmly. Each picture you find here may take up to 40 hours to create, and it is my hope that these 'slow' pictures pictures carry with them a quiet magic, a reminder of the silent fabric upon which the tales of the universe are told.

The woodlands, and the soft murmur of rippling streams near to where I live, are rich in this 'silence'. Here the 'Otherworld' seems so near, the clock forgets to measure time and the soul is set free. The drawings and watercolours explore this faery-tale realm, this in-between world inhabited by the strange and peculiar, the wise and the wonderful. Each picture is an invitation for the viewer to explore the Imaginal realm.

Creating pictures for me is much the same as gradually opening the shutters, or drawing the curtains to peer through an open window into the realm of Untold Stories. Staring into blank paper, images begin to appear in the whiteness. Then gently, softly, pencil and paint explore the landscape and embrace its creatures and its people. For a brief moment I am honoured to be present in a land both familiar and fantastic.

I use mainly water colour and ink though I also love gouache and oils and plain old graphite.

All manner of stories and films and artists inspire me but I have a preference for things that connect me with the vastness and the power of nature and the stillness and peace comes from that reunion.

Silence is a canvas upon which nature thrives and imagination plays. In the deep, dark forests of the North, where the trees and boulders huddle together to keep warm, there is a place I know, that calls the Imagination to ignite into fireworks of Joy.

Work in progress for 'Troll Song'

a slow growing tale ...

The Old Burrow

Process