Here we are in March - and it is still raining! In desperation on a very tempestuous day, I concluded the only way I will ever get outside drawing again is to invest in better wet weather gear-and just get wet!

So off I traipsed to Broardsands-and what a surprise-yes it was pelting down, but the raw energy of the crashing sea was so wonderfully uplifting!

I only managed to stay out there for about 30 minutes before my paper started to disintergrate, and back in the calm of my studio I kept working, using memory-a powerful tool in understanding what drew me to those cliffs-what were the key takeaways, the things that stayed in my mind

what i remembered: the striations in the rocks, the cold blue of the sea, the strong wind, a bench perched on the cliff and the viaduct in the mist….

Sometimes coming home from being out drawing can be a bit loaded-what am I going to produce from this experience…..expectation…..all the dreadful things!

A good way to get over this is to launch into creating some collage that represents the way I felt -big black strong energetic shapes; floating some thin paint on plastic then monoprinting to get that feeling of wateryness…../

now I am away-fully immersed in a zone of experimentation -a long way from any expectation

working this way and really sticking with it can yield some lovely work. I think too often I have been so focussed on outcome that i have curtailed the experience somehow- The rush towards certainty destroys surprise and the unexpected

Appreciating bad weather

What Happened Here?