Something a little different today - a painting~poem artwork. And the story of how it came about.

Four years ago, I followed a wonderful online course in intuitive painting from Chris Zydel. It was unlike anything I had ever done and seemed just what I needed at that point to free up my intuition for my painting and for my life. The course took me into all kinds of unexplored places in my history and thinking. I so loved the processes that I incorporated some of them into my practice and my workshops. ‘Dynamic painting’ is my label for the way of painting that came out of merging intuitive techniques with my art school learning.

I found that, as I painted, words and phrases would echo around my head. I started writing these down and later adjusted them a little so that they worked as poems. The dynamic paintings and their poems needed to stay together, and I called them “painting~poem artworks”. Over a year or so, I collected enough to put them together in a small book with help from a designer in Berlin.

Soul song is one of my favourites - I remember painting it in my old thatched cottage and how the movement of the brush over the paper felt like singing. The painting was bought by two women who came to my exhibition in Berlin - they had just found their first flat and were looking for a picture by a woman artist.

Chris Zydel’s website

The book of painting~poems