About

INCLUDING ANXIETY

I made a series of watercolours during a voyage around Thailand and Japan.
Visiting secluded locations in hotels and in temple precincts, I encountered friendly strangers as I worked, sometimes throughout the night . These watercolours had to be made in an almost instantaneous moment. The changing situation; weather, illuminated buildings, mosquitoes, temple dogs, presented a pressure to capture the moment before it all broke down.

Often, I could not see what I was painting. This provided me with fluidity and a sense of abandon. Their almost unhinged quality provides both their strength and their vulnerability. I made no attempt to revisit them after the moment had passed and in a sense they were an expression of the rarity of the encounter and my sense of the need to include the anxiety of the situation in my paintings.