The painting process: an unknown destination
I never know where a painting is going to end up when I begin to paint.
There’s usually no defined path, no confirmed route map, no colour plan taped to the wall. Just a brush, some paper, and a commitment to begin and keep going.
This used to scare me. Now, it’s the whole point.
The way I paint is often a form of improvisation. Marks and brushstokes responding to what is already there… Small decision, small decision, small decision.
It’s like walking into the forrest with no clear path ahead, working out where I am going as I go. I build up lots of layers of paint hoping something interesting will develop. I often think the painting process requires an optimism, a commitment to problem solving, a hope that everything will turn out for the best.
The Australian artist John Olsen said:
“Painting is a means of self-enlightenment.”
And I think that's so true.
Because it’s not just the painting that reveals an image, the process often reveals something of myself to me as well.
Sometimes I don’t know what my paintings are about until I have painted them.
That’s how this new body of work arrived. I didn’t set out to paint a memory. But as I was painting these paintings, I could feel there was a visual memory that I was reaching for that was just out of reach. The paintings were reminding me of something important and I couldn’t quite place it.
And then a scene returned: a wooden tray. A box of antique buttons handed down generation to generation. A small visual memory that felt important to me. Me as a little girl, my mother encouraging me to play with her button box on a large wooden tray “Sort them however you like.” Playing with the little circles and dots of colour, arranging them again and again, over and over.
I’d forgotten all about this small domestic scene from 45 years ago. But when I looked at these paintings it came right back to me. So I have named these paintings The Button Keepers are layered, luminous, and slow-built paintings. They hold both clarity and mess. Brightness and darkness. Nostalgia and hope. They don’t really illustrate a story but they did sort of uncover one.
We don’t have to know the ending before we begin. In art or in life. We don’t have to “figure it out.” We can build the meaning as we go.
We can stay open. We can stay curious. We can keep showing up, even when the path forward is unclear. Slowly, hopefully, something interesting reveals itself to us…
