Lights in night-time windows, little boats their lights shimmering on water, street lamps funnelling pools of light on to pavements, are deep-in-the-heart universal images evoking safety, security and comfort.
Absorbing myself in laying down colours in acrylics on heavy cartridge paper, then slightly sanding the paper - sometimes to reveal the white paper underneath and sometimes to just make light scratch marks - it was like pulling a bucket from a well and over time I dredged up ideas and as Seamus Heaney wrote, ‘set the darkness echoing’.
I had no particular aim in mind except to enjoy the process but I wanted to keep the overall feel dark, just adding tiny slivers of rich colour with chalk and oil pastels. Working on a few of these at the same time, I began to see them metaphorically as images of comfort and peace in dark times, so I called the series ‘Light in the Darkness’.