Release Me

From the series “Violent Death”

For a long time, my friend Anita has been trying to encourage me to paint. It had never even occurred to me to seriously try to paint, and I just laughed at her suggestion.

I have only two memories of painting at school, which was over 20 years ago. Once was with poster paints when I painted a woman with a big cleavage – and that’s really the only detail I remember! I don’t think it was a particularly fantastic piece of work; I don’t recall any shading or anything particularly expressive about it. The other time was with water colours and I just vaguely remember being shown how to drag the brush across the entire width of the paper again and again to create the sky. It was a rather dull lesson. In fact, neither experience filled me with any enthusiasm, so it’s no surprise that I never picked up a paint brush again.

Although I had felt inspired by Philippa’s work to be creative again, I had never felt inspired to paint in my whole life! Then I saw these paintings on Loaded Brush. The violent nature of the paintings struck a chord with me, particularly the second one, “Blown Away”, as I had been feeling pretty angry and aggressive at the time. The pieces were so powerful and yet so simple.

I decided I wanted to create something expressive, and I had an idea for a painting. The same day I also saw Philippa’s series of paintings entitled "Unrest" and I decided to develop my idea into a series of my own entitled “Violent Death” – I know; it's pretty optimistic for someone who had never seriously painted before to decide to paint a whole series! But my ideas were pretty basic so I was confident that I could manage them. I wanted to depict some of the rage and desperation I was feeling, and also to draw attention to the violent world around us.





I painted my first piece on 16th January and it is entitled “Release Me”. Acrylic on canvas, 50cm x 40cm.