Actually, I don’t often paint on canvas…. acrylics, on canvas at least, and I are yet to have a truly happy relationship. But that aside, there is something both wonderful and terrifying about a blank…  piece of watercolour paper.

I generally have a fairly solid idea of what I want to create before I start, right down to the name in most cases. I think I’m going to try and break the latter habit, and see what happens. Anyway, that is the wonderful… the potential of the idea and the image inside my head. The terrifying is the fear of getting it completely wrong, of the painted image looking absolutely nothing like the picture inside my head. Like a lot of artists, I find that the final product is hardly ever 100% like the imagined… but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Paintings evolve and wriggle around under my brush, sometimes because the imagined image has evolved,  sometimes because a new technique is discovered and sometimes to cover up a mistake or accident lol. Then there is the occassional heartbreak, the final painting that has none of the emotion and magic of the imagined. Something has gone completely wrong. This is when handy phrases like learning curve, interesting experiment and makes one stronger should be used!

Today I cut down one of my large watercolour sheets into the sizes I like to work with. They are sitting around me, pristine white pieces of watercolour paper, waiting patiently to find out what they will become…… and as the images dance in my head I feel excitement… and fear. But mostly excitement

Mystery and Shadows has it’s very own blog! Hello!

I have first post nerves…. I guess I will start with what I am working on at the moment

Lady Bones: Lady Bones is a tiny desert faery, reading the future in the tiny bones she collects as she wanders across the red sands surrounding her home. The colours in this piece so far are very rich, dark reds and purples for the desert dunes with a twilight shy. The Lady herself is sitting on the sand in front of the ancient, half-buried human skull that is her home. She has a small bag of bones nearby, and the husk of some strange seed in front of her – it is into this that she castes the bones. Within them she reads the stories of the desert, and the delicate patterns of potential futures.

Selene: Selene is a moon goddess painting, my vision of the many moon goddesses that cast their silver light in mythology. I’ve always been fascinated by moons, and astronomy. There is an infinite universe out there, perhaps more than one – a multiverse – and I sometimes feel drawn to paint within that realm. Etoile and The Traveller are other pieces of mine that definitely have an outer space theme.

I have a list of ideas for new paintings as well – a pixie leading a traveller (the viewer) astray, the midmight muse who can cause sleepless nights full of intense creative energy, another Traveller, and a Glauconer. So, that’s all for now… thanks for reading