There's a particular kind of satisfaction in looking back at the first three months of the year and seeing the work has found its homes.
Ten original paintings and two framed prints of The Witterings have gone out into the world since January. The split between my English and Scottish coastal work was almost exactly even, which feels right. The two coastlines (The Witterings + West Coast of Scotland) have always lived alongside each other in my practice, and clearly they live alongside each other in collectors' homes too.
What I keep coming back to, though, isn't the count. It's who the paintings went to.
Some pieces went to collectors I've known for years. People who have followed the work through different studios, different coastlines, different chapters. Others went to homes I'd never reached before. Both matter to me equally. The long-standing relationships are a quiet privilege after thirty odd years of painting, and the new ones are a reminder that the work is still finding its way to people who feel something when they stand in front of it.
Denise Collins, who has represented me at Castle Gallery Inverness for almost all of my career, has said of the work: "She is a dedicated and passionate painter and it is for this reason that her work will stand the test of time." That's not a sentence I'd ever write about my own paintings, but coming from someone who has watched the practice evolve across a quarter of a century, it means a great deal.
The arts journalist Georgina Coburn once described the work as showing an artist "engaged with the actual process of painting, challenging both herself and her audience to see a popular subject in a new way." That observation has always stayed with me, because it gets at something I'm still trying to do every time I walk into the studio. Coastal painting is a popular subject for a reason. The challenge, and the privilege, is finding new ways to look at it.
I'm still in the studio most days. Still chasing the same questions about light and surface and mark. Still letting the materials lead where they want to go. The fact that the work continues to find collectors — old and new — is the part I don't take for granted.
Thank you, genuinely, to everyone who has welcomed a painting into their home this year. You're the reason I keep going back to the canvas.