Art Deco & Art Nouveau: As much as I love the beautiful mountains in the Villars-Gryon area, during ‘lock down’ in April 2020 I felt the need for a change of scene, change of subject and change of style. Thinking about the one place where I would really love to be, it was looking at photos of Lac Léman (Lake Geneva) that really inspired and transported me.

So I travelled there in my imagination using my geometric style to capture ‘Poppies by Lac Léman’, visiting more of an Art Deco style for ‘Beautiful Evening by The Lake’ and took inspiration from Charles Rene Mackintosh for ‘Art Nouveau in Montreux’. I felt as though I needed to break complex detail down in to simple shapes and bands of colour. This made me happy!

One-Line Paintings: Years ago, whilst on an educational visit to the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern with a group of school children, I happened upon an intriguing postcard named ‘Polarlandscaft, 1920’. I have been collecting postcards from art museums and galleries for many years, but this one inspired me to develop sketches of the local landscape using but a single line to follow the contours of the mountains, roofs and trees…

Paul Klee’s use of line and shape are both playful and whimsical. Mimicking his work has brought a sense of fun to my artwork. ‘One-Line Winterlandschaft’ 2019 is the first painting I created in this style. I decided the moon should be suspended by a single line in order to connect it to the landscape, I was really pleased with it and things have just followed on from there.

I now enjoy the process of painting a neutral ground on the canvas with a mixture of tinted yellow ochre, burnt sienna, gold and bronze acrylic paint. I then scale up an appropriate sketch from my sketchbook. If I am working on a small-scale illustration on canvas board I tend to apply Caran d’Ache Swiss made watercolour pencils and a pen outline. On a larger scale I work up the layers in acrylics and paint the continuous-line with a small paint brush.

RustiChic: When we renovated the interior of our little Swiss chalet we had left over ‘bardage’ wood which lent itself well to making frames. Being an avid lover of reclaiming and recycling I often up-cycle old frames and paint modern-style paintings to fit them. These hand-made creations are unique, rustic and chic - hence the label ‘rustiChic’.