The journey I’ve been on this year with light and colour intensified when my Mum died suddenly in February. On the day that she died I drove back in the most incredible late winter sunset, raking intense light over the Suffolk countryside and the trees, hedges and lampposts were all bright orange to me. It was intense in many senses of the word and a visual experience engraved in my memory. In the weeks after she left I began to see ‘lines of light’ wherever I went. This was mainly due to the low light of February and then into early Spring, but streaks of light would appear on the side of buildings, on floors, walls - pretty much everywhere and most specifically it would often be orange, that same orange I saw on that long, long drive home. This appearance of light became a source of comfort to me and added to my fascination of the effect of light and colour on our psyche. A few weeks after her death I began experimenting with light and colour bouncing off copper and I had the idea to start ‘collaging with light’.

I realised that day when I was playing with sunlight coming in to the studio and holding up coloured pieces of glass and mirrors that the shapes I often see out in the world were replicating themselves on to the painted and burnished copper, creating the most magical colours which would pretty much be impossible to produce using paint. It set the course for a line of enquiry which is only just beginning to develop now - but the ‘Lines of Light’ continued as a subject in to the works I developed on copper for the London Design Festival…. more in the next post coming soon.