For the last four months I have been working in oil, a break away from batik to explore alternative methods to express and inform my creativity.
I chose to work with floral images, enjoying their intense colour and natural design. Some of these paintings may form a new wave of future batiks or other mixed media interpretations.

I painted “Peggy Ballard and other Hellebores” from a mix of my own that I’d grown in the garden and reference pictures from seed and flower catalogues. The colours of these flowers are an unusual mix of greens, mauves, dusky pinks to rich wine reds, creamy whites and almost black. Added to this wonderful colour scheme are speckled contrasts and variegations with clean or lacy edges – the various natural designs are wonderful and great to paint !

I was struck by the luminous blue of the Himalayan poppies and decided not to tone them down but paint them as brilliant as they are.

I seeded some of my own cornflowers last year and they grew abundantly in many shades of blue, so these are all my own work.

Painting in oil has allowed me more precision than working in batik, mainly because it is possible to wipe away, repaint or paint over any mistakes; this was always impossible in batik, I had to get it right first time. However I still have a long learning process ahead so will have to do a lot more painting to discover the possibilities.

Anemones have appeared many times in my painted work and batiks, I am drawn to their jewel strength velvety colour and wild, sometimes untidy foliage.
The following three paintings are larger and my approach was more abstract.

Canyon is based on an iris flower magnified and enhanced on the computer, distorting some of the colour.
The paintings below are tiny in comparison to those above, I recently exhibited a line of ten all in a row.

All the paintings here on show are painted right around the sides, tops and bottoms, bringing in three dimension, and designed to be hung unframed.