All the energy intensity and focus for many months to the lead up to an exhibition is deflated into a limp, zip, puddle ….

To get past this I have launched myself into pastels on paper. It is so refreshing using a different medium with quick results with no thought of mixing complex combinations of oil paint. I feel entirely unencumbered and I can take my box of Rembrandts and paper anywhere. I remember in Kuala Lumpur I sat in Starbucks for 120 minutes each day at 2 pm when my daughter was asleep and drew ferociously immersed in squares and iced green tea. I also did a series of pastels in Venice Beach whilst in Los Angeles.

This time I am preparing six smaller works and five large works all on paper. The theme. that keeps emerging and what I have been pondering is Children’s Dreams… I’m sure kids have nightmares too but mostly my daughters seem to go to amazing spaces and places. I would love to be dreaming about fairies and adventures in the stars. So my little pieces are little glimpses and flashes into dream worlds, a tiny slice of a vibrating aquamarine and a snippet of luxurious shimmering fuschia. I remember a friend came to me once and told me of the most vivid dream she had had about me. I was “The Pink Lady” where clothes were rose silk and every item was salmon and the “entire atmosphere was pink”.

I feel much more enlivened now, the power of colour is so powerful and as I work it’s as though the piece starts talking to me and there is a definite visual language that emerges.. I am totally swept away by this process of placing colour and trusting what will happen next. These little dreams become my life, each little square adding up to a little moment of the whole.