It feels appropriate to start this blog with a post about where things started.

My early memories of Mum’s studio are all about the smell of turps and oil paint and canvases as big as me propped up against the wall. The texture of the globs of impasto paint as it was drying, so tempting to squish. I don’t remember images or pictures of things just the deliciously exciting fields of colour completely filling my vision (perhaps this is why I love Joan Mitchell’s work so much).

My parents were both students at Glasgow School of Art in the 1950s, mum has mostly painted still lives and portraits, and landscapes in her later work.

When I was growing up painting seemed like an unremarkable thing to be doing every day. Lots of people we knew did it too. Many years later it is my turn to paint, and now that I have started I can’t easily stop, put the brush down, leave the studio.