Joe Brown wrote of his first sighting of Kangchenjunga from Darjeeling in March 1955, "...I was looking at a gigantic, unearthly shape, boiling inside a tissue-thin bank of cloud... This was truly an incredible sight... It was the first dramatic sight that aroused the imagination." The Hard Years, 1967
My creative imagination is driven by these hints and glimpses, the ethereal juxtaposed with massive solidity. I strive to capture the essence of the mountain world, the visual contradictions between massive structures and fleeting perceptions, dissolving forms and stark edges, the elemental and the personal. The acts of walking and drawing, paying attention, become meditations on the landscape, lifting me out of time.
The time I spend immersed in the landscape gives me a deep understanding of how the mountains fit together and a feel for the qualities of rock, snow and weather. Braving the elements, I make work to bring back to the studio. I translate the studies I make there into my striking and innovative monotypes, distinctive etchings and evocative watercolours.
Out there, often in hard to reach, difficult places, the connection is both physical and spiritual. Nothing replaces the energy and the visual and physical memories stored up from spending time in these special places - memories that inform the work I make in my studio and the printmaking workshop. This emotional engagement with landscape is essential to me in conveying the sense of a place in my work.
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