...Yesterday a few friends and I had our first painting/creativity day. I have had a chat with Chroma who make the juicy oil paint-like acrylics I paint with, and they were happy to supply paints for this first, experimental workshop. Chroma pays painters to demonstrate their products; I wasn’t paid at this stage but was interested to try to work out how to set up a safe, playful, supportive environment where people could be brave enough to do something new. It went so well that there will be more - although we may need to find a bigger venue than my living room!

The idea was to approach it as a cross between kindergarten and a mad scientist’s laboratory - to explore and experiment and loosen up, not trying to finish with an artwork but rather enjoying what happens when you put this here, or smear that there, etc. A digital camera is great to capture a painting if you like it, so you can then keep going and make a mess of the whole thing!

I ended up with a forest as autumn approaches - I keep coming back to trees!

...............