I’ve been a bit quiet recently, hanging back from socials and experiencing life in some new ways.

These changes are all age appropriate, and in truth, very lovely. Carl and I went away overseas for a few days, to visit Porto in Portugal. On our return, I had booked myself on a painting weekend course in Norfolk with an artist whose work I’ve been a fan-girl of for many years.

It was quite the week.

I say age-appropriate because our youngest is nearing 18 now, the olders buzzing in and out of the house as they do between other jobs and trips away. This trip marks the beginning of Carl and me being able (and more importantly, comfortable) with waving ourselves off and out of the picture for the best part of a week.

We had no one to please but ourselves. We walked thousands of steps around Porto, sucking in the culture and history, visual treasures and stories, sketchbook in hand - stopping for coffee, lunch, glass of Port whenever we fancied, it was magical.

Monday to Thursday worked beautifully. Home late on Thursday, rest (and piles of washing) on Friday, off to painting retreat on Saturday, over to Sunday.

With fresh experiences in mind (Porto) I sat quietly with the most lovely group of people around me (there were 8 of us in total) and allowed myself to be taught. Once again, taking in, rather than giving out.

The course was perfect timing after our trip away, allowing me some time to digest the experience whilst making work that felt unusual and out of my comfort zone to begin with. By the beginning of day two, I was raring to go and way more confident.

The course title was ‘Painting From Imagination’. Being a 100% visual girl, I began the course with zero idea of how this might work for me. All my working life I’ve worked, well, from life. Seeing something and responding to it by drawing or painting it. Flowers, dogs, still life, buildings, landscape - never have I worked from my imagination only.

It was like being let loose on the ice wearing only wellies.

The artist whose course it was held us all beautifully, guiding us into our thoughts, encouraging us with 1:1 chats and conversations, offering us exercises to find our voices.

Once again, the only word is magical.

The painting above was my first go. I can’t tell you how many times I painted something in - then painted over, leaving only a tiny part of the previous bit of work, then painted in and painted out again. Each idea leading me onto another.

This second work above found me finding my feet. I began it half way through day two.

One of the best exercises for me was to take an image from two separate piles of paper. These were tiny images which we were to pull out without looking. Whatever the images were of, marked the beginning point of our painting.

In the above work, I pulled out a Bunny - and a miserable looking woman!

In the end, the bunny got painted out but the lady stayed, thankfully, she isn’t looking quite as miserable, more now lost in thought.

Working this way allowed my mind to lose the blank-canvas-syndrome that we all know too well, giving food for thought to get paint on the canvas. What happens next is both in the moment and natural.

When I left home for the course, I took with me a book by an artist whose work I love. Florine Stettheimer. I first encountered her paintings in the mid 90s in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. I was entranced by her placement, colour, decandance and the social history her work documents - as well as the size of them, they are HUGE! I bought her book on leaving the Met, a big financial commitment for a skint young artist, but it’s one of the things that I would run into a burning building to retrieve and will most definitely be coming with me into my care home one day.

Last week was quite the week, few and far between moments when techtonic plates shift for an artist.

I’m only too happy to share it with you.

Much love

Sam x