“You want to paint?  First you must cut out your tongue…….so as to take away your right to express yourself with anything but your brush”.

Such was the advice from the master Henri Matisse… hence, I feel comfortable borrowing his words to explain my own feelings about what I do.

“starting to paint, I feel gloriously free, quiet, alone….. …   drawing is not an exercise of particular dexterity, but above all a means of expressing intimate feelings and moods…….colours have their own distinctive beauty that you have to capture, just as in music you try to capture the sounds ……..a  certain blue enters your soul….a certain red affects your blood pressure……..”

At 72, with my tongue still intact……. I feel I have been painting forever. Nature is my muse, but her rhythms, colours, moods are what I chase. A fertile imagination and a storehouse of memories provide the starting points for the act of painting, immersing myself in the surfaces as I would sail on the water or dive into its depths.