Reflecting on 2024

As I look back on 2024, I find myself doing so with mixed emotions. The year brought moments of both sorrow and growth, with personal loss, creative exploration and some new thoughts and ideas shaping my journey as an artist.

The year began with a significant loss. In January, I lost a friend to cancer. Though we had only known each other for a couple of years, her absence left a deep mark on me. Later in the year, my cousin’s sudden death came as a shock; a stark reminder of the fragility of life. These events have stayed with me, weaving their way into my thoughts and my art.

As a painter, I often feel that I am walking a fine line - trying to capture the vitality of life while acknowledging its impermanence. I painted a self-portrait in the days after my friend died, a quiet expression of my grief. I think the emotions I felt in that moment are visible in the work.

This year, my creative focus has been drawn increasingly toward memory and how we perceive and reconstruct it. I have been reading a few books on the human mind and memory, which has informed my thinking. I highly recommend Julia Shaw’s excellent book, The Memory Illusion. It offers insights into how memory is less a fixed record and can even be seen as a creative act. Memory is fluid, fallible, and endlessly fascinating.

These ideas have influenced the direction of my art. I found myself revisiting old floral paintings, giving them new life by altering them and adding layers. These works start with observation from life - flowers blooming and fading - and sometimes use photography as a kind of digital memory to aid the process after the flowers have faded. I have now started reworking some of these paintings, erasing or veiling areas into misty obscurity using techniques like scraping or glazing. 

This process feels akin to the act of forgetting, only to later "remember" and recreate new areas of colour, shape, and tone. The result is something different, reflecting how memory shifts over time and how moments are reshaped in the retelling.

   

My work this year has encompassed flowers, still life, portraits, and the occasional bird in my personal practice, with themes of memory and identity becoming more prominent. 

Meanwhile, commissions for paintings of people and pets remain an important aspect of my professional career.

  

I finished off the year with another two portraits. One is a self portrait, which I began during a lesson with a student, in which I was teaching some of the techniques and processes used by Vermeer: I focused on the particular colours he used in his underpainting, followed by a simplified colour palette and soft transitions and light quality. I infused my own thoughts on memory into the painting as it developed. This ‘Woman with an Amber Earring’ looks back at the viewer over her shoulder with a misty and uncertain landscape around her. 

The last portrait of the year is of my youngest niece. I worked from a photograph I took of her sitting on my brother’s shoulders. There is something enigmatic about the way she seems to look to the future. Her expression resonated with my thoughts on memory and how we use it to shape ourselves and even our futures.

Not every goal I set out for this year came to fruition. For instance, my submission to the Royal Institute of Oil Painters exhibition wasn’t accepted, but there were successes too; I gained two new wholesale customers for my greetings cards, and it has been lovely to see them on display in local farm shops and boutiques.

As I look ahead to 2025, I am excited to see how my work will continue to evolve. I plan to take on new challenges, refine my techniques, and develop my ideas further. There are more open calls I’d like to try, and I hope to develop both the technical and conceptual aspects of my practice.

This past year has reminded me that both art and life are processes of remembering, revisiting, and reimagining.