The Writer Also Paints

“What made you decide to paint?” A question I am often asked. “Quite by chance”, I reply. I came to painting through being a writer. Curiouser and Curiouser.

Wearing my writer’s hat (the one with the feathery quill), I have over the years attended many seminars, workshops, conferences, talks and parties, a favourite being the marvellous Summer Writers’ Holiday at Caerleon College organised by energetic Anne and Gerry Hobbs. When they put on the first Winter Writers’ Holiday at the Fishguard Bay Hotel, Pembrokeshire, I couldn’t get there fast enough. Enjoying unseasonably warm weather for February, delightful company, great workshops, good food and a room commanding wonderful views across the bay, I booked then and there for the following year.

A close friend, novelist Avis Birkett, accompanied me the second time. (Avis and her books will be introduced in a later blog.) On arriving we found, to our disappointment, the tutor booked to run our chosen workshop had been forced to cancel, another established writer stepping in, someone whom Avis and I were not enamoured with. Perchance, Gerry had the foresight to introduce, from the outset of these winter gatherings, art sessions run by artist Andrew Arney from the University of Wales. Gerry kindly obliged when we requested switching to Andrew’s class. I had studied art at school but never produced anything worthy, dabbled a bit in watercolours in intervening years but everything had gone into the rubbish bin. I was, quite frankly, crap!

Andrew Arney was an inspiration. A calm, quiet man, he started with the basics: drawing, perspectives and colour wheels, providing everything necessary and every medium except oils, helping and instructing us novices create on paper the beautiful seascape we looked out upon. I tried watercolours, pastels, charcoal. To no avail. All were a messy splodge fit only for being sunk without trace beneath the cold, salty water below the hotel. On the final day, he suggested I try acrylics. The first stroke of the loaded brush was like a light turning on. An epiphany. Acrylics and I were made for each other. The resultant painting, although only postcard size, was good. I was pleased, Andrew highly appraising. Consequently, I came away elated. I had found my painter’s voice and a new hat to wear.

During the ensuing months I purchased paints and brushes, countless how-to-paint books, watched a never-ending stream of art lesson programmes on TV, and stocked up on scrap hardboard which my husband willingly cut into smaller pieces as practice canvas. But the primed board in front of me remained blank. It wasn’t a case of painter’s block, more a stark fear of making a right muck up of it. Eventually I plucked up courage and plunged into the cobalt blues and cadmium yellows congealing on my homemade stay-wet palette. A bluebell scene emerged. “You never painted that, did you?” hubby asked, more surprised than me at the finished result.

Leaving for the third Writers at Fishguard, Avis persuaded me to take some of my paintings along to seek Andrew’s professional opinion. He studied each one carefully, pointed out where I showed a particular skill, where and how I could improve but all, he told me, were very saleable. Later, I created a gallery of the paintings on my website, and was thrilled when contacted by a lady in Germany who had fallen in love with my first bluebell picture. Could she buy it? Reluctant to let it go, after all it was my first “proper” unaided piece, in the end I gave in. Sold! I am glad I did. She commissioned three further pieces: two more bluebells and a winter scene.

So now I wear two hats. (Excuse me a moment whilst I find my beret. Arrh, here it is.) The pictures keep coming: landscapes and floral fields, winter scenes and lots and lots of bluebells. Many have sold. One painting, a large winter scene, was purchased by a couple in Spain through an auction, raising funds to help pay for treatment for my nephew’s young son who has cerebral palsy, as in my previous blog. Earlier this year I was invited to show two paintings at Yarm Originals, an art gallery based in the north of England. A public exhibition of my work is planned for hopefully the not-to-distant future. Perhaps one day I will write a book about my paintings. Who knows where the paths in the landscapes will lead.

Meanwhile, my work can be seen on my website: https://kitdominoart.com/

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