Michèle Griffiths

“Many of my paintings are inspired by watching the light on the sea when sailing in Greece and England. The immediacy and intensity of experiencing changing light from a boat, at different times of the day and night provide endless scope for the exploration through colour, of the transformative power of light. The big challenge is to approach this popular subject of seascapes in an innovative way. The places I paint are rarely specific; the viewer is invited to make their own individual associations and interpretations. There are visual clues, but nothing is explicit.

Each canvas is carefully prepared with three or more layers of primer, followed by painting many fine layers of different coloured oil paint. These I repeatedly over-paint and scratch through making lines, gradually paring the composition down to essentials. I have developed my own style and techniques over the years and they all continue to evolve.

Following experiments with desert sand to build up an image, I have recently been making a body of work using plaster. These “Wall Fragments” derive from the time-worn, white walls of ancient Greek village houses. Working on them is like painting and drawing in 3D - with all the challenges that that brings. Still working in layers, the process mimics the annual whitewashing of walls, and the way that scars, cracks, scuffs and graffiti are partially erased. Thus the finished work is testimony to the passage of time, in both the historical and personal sense.
 

As with all my work, what is happening in each piece is not immediately obvious. Ideally I would like to think the works are looked at slowly and quietly, in the same meditative mood in which they were painted.”

Michèle Griffiths 2010