Picasso claimed that “…colour weakens.” He purged it from his work to highlight the formal structure and autonomy of form inherent in his art. Black and white drawings and paintings allow the observer to concentrate on elements such as composition, value, lighting and form. The benefit of black and white is that you can focus on the image as a whole.

The way coronavirus has confined us all has presented struggle and despair for most. It has brought front and centre the purpose and needs to create art in all its evolving forms. As Andrei Tarkovsky put it, “Why do people go to the cinema, sit in a darkened room for two hours and, watch the play of shadows on a sheet. Art has the power to widen, enhance and concentrate a person’s experience.  To make it longer, significantly longer. It lets us assimilate ourselves to the world and others. It inspires us to be humble, compassionate and forgiving. It gives us understanding, it gives us peace. Ultimately, the allotted function of art is not, as often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as an example. Art aims to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.”

I am a ‘Grisaille’ inspired local artist, an award-winning Advanced Skills Teacher and relative to esteemed artist William (Bill) Bowyer. For the last three years, I have worked as a professional artist and designer in my second-floor studio at the Foxlowe Arts Centre, Leek, Staffordshire. Here I work, tutor and collaborate with others in the Creative Hub.  I am inspired by the ephemeral fragile natural world, and love to capture vivid poignant pictures in a realistic format.  I naturally gravitate to ordinary people or wildlife finding themselves in extraordinary circumstances or vice versa. Much of my pleasure is in the process. In a world where colour reigns supreme, simplifying the artwork by restricting the colour scheme to a classic black and white palette gives the observer’s eye a place to rest and breaks from saturated colour.

I am a true advocate for the importance of ‘good drawing’. Drawing is a wonderful way of engaging with the peculiarity and beauty of the visible world; whether working on a portrait, figure, still life or landscape, there is a joy in unpicking the perceptual experience. Drawing is a systematic process of intense looking and working through, finding precision through searching and adjustment. The joy of mark-making and placement to describe an encounter distilled through eye, mind and feeling.