Painting is so much more than what you see on the wall. Colour, figuration and texture are a vital part of the process but my main drive is to feel what I’m painting. The painting becomes the translation of a feeling into the canvas. It is as if I was inviting a feeling to the surface, welcoming it to paint alongside me. The initial drawing and the actions taking place in the image are immediately turned into gestural figuration and melt into movement. 

I started to study painting formally after having children, and it quickly became clear to me that I didn’t want to exclude the pivotal experience of being a mother from my practice, particularly its element of care, and how this has played up in relation to my own needs, desires, personhood and self-care. Breastfeeding is an image I often return to. That twilight zone, between being there and not there. Your body and the body of the infant are combined, but your mind is free to roam. Even though the figures in my painting are not me, I’m constantly measuring myself against them. I can feel the size of my shoulder, how it sits next to my neck and carries my arm. I indulge myself into that full awareness of the body, when you don’t even need to look or touch it. I also turn to my memories, both the memory of a feeling – I remember how it feels to have the baby latching onto my breast – and a visual memory – I remember looking down at the baby’s leg and how it would lean against my waist. These are moments when I become the painting and stop thinking; I become what I’m doing, and it feels real.