The Place Where Souls Are Born

"The Place Where Souls are Born" is the largest painting of the series I just finished and I think it may be my favourite (although don't tell the others!) I took photos of the painting as I was working on it, so I thought I'd show you how it developed over a few weeks.This whole series was a chance for me to explore ways of conveying emotion and atmosphere with paint. I worked in a limited colour palette across about 10 paintings, and I focused on the feeling of freedom and joy that I have when I am out on the moors with my little dog and it's just the two of us and the wind and the curlews, and miles and miles of heather and stone and bracken.I always begin by playing with paint. These were the very first marks I made.Unfortunately, I didn't take another photograph until this stage, which came after several layers of paint had been applied. Suddenly I knew I pretty much had my composition and my colour palette.From now on, it was a matter of clarifying the design and making everything more rich and interesting.I really liked the light, fresh feeling of the version below ...But I still felt it didn't have enough depth or interest. I love to see a painting from a distance, have it grab my attention, and then go over and discover all sorts of delicious surprises when I get up close. So I began to add depth into the sky areas with more layers and with glazes. I also added some collage and made more marks with pencil, oil pastels and coloured pencils.As I continued developing the piece, much of what I had just added disappeared behind new layers, but I didn't mind. It all adds to the final results and by now I was really following my intuition and trusting that it knew what it was doing.By the stage above, I liked the design, the colours and the marks and I just wanted to make everything richer and more interesting - including the large light sky area. So I applied more glazes (thin washes of paint) and also added more vibrant shots of oil pastelHere's the finished piece.I love this painting because it's my most ambitious in scale, but also because it achieves what I set out to achieve. This is how I feel about being out on the moor and I hope it gives some sense of that feeling to other people."The Place Where Souls are Born" is on show at The Gallery at the Art Shop in Ilkley for one month from November 6th.