I also like to sketch and draw in detail as a means of recording visual information and developing ideas for painting as well to produce fully resolved works, exploring the varying densities of graphite on paper. Drawing is a valuable entry point to my painting which begins with photographs, sketches and observational drawings to investigate aspects of the each work before committing to paint. The painting of an image for me begins with a spark of inspiration, intuition, an inner recognition of something from a visual experience, a place, objects, buildings, figures, textures or colours. I collect and consider memories, visual patterns, forms, colour, texture and emotion and proceed on a journey, guided by a silent inner intuition trusting that, through the painting process, a final image will come to fruition.

After many years of using oil glazes my painting practice has evolved. Difficulties and challenges in my life have been catalysts for change not only in life but also my in my work. Consequently my relationship with painting has deepened and has led to a better understanding of its challenges and its potential to offer something to those who view my work as well as bringing sustenance for my own life.

My experience with oil glazing provided an entry point into the use of egg tempera, another traditional medium which was historically superseded the use of oil paints. Over recent years this has become my primary and preferred medium. The two mediums are very different materially but provide the same opportunity to build an image with the multi-layering of opaque or translucent colour. I enjoy the demands of working with egg tempera, a meditative process, exacting and time consuming, requiring layers of finely detailed, gentle but expressive mark making, culminating in delicate, graduating layers of colour. For me there is an other-worldly quality to be achieved with egg tempera painting and this has lent itself to a further development in my practice which coincided with my adoption of this medium. A simple challenge from a student to produce a painting based on landscape along with the adoption of egg tempera as a medium, began a shift in my relationship to painting and this combination has provided a rich source of inspiration for my art practice. 

The use of egg tempera draws me to the quiet layering of paint and an appreciation of the beauty of detail, and subtle changes of colour. I use a limited palette and rely on this to achieve the variation of colour and tone in an organic process of combining initial colours, then adding further colour to the original mix. This produces a progressive development of tone which ensures a close relationship between one area and another and supports the calm, meditative atmosphere of my work. 

The image that finally evolves, emerges from the layering of colours and tones that form the core of my enduring pleasure in painting, regardless of the subject matter. The final image is very rarely clear to me at the onset of a piece of work. One transparent or opaque colour over or against another, one shape in relation to another and the image develops. The challenge is to create light, shadow, form and texture through this layering process, absorbing and transforming visual clues from the physical world and reflecting them back to the viewer through landscape to offer a sense of other.

Currently artists that are influential to my work are Gustav Klimt for his lesser known landscapes, British artists Eric Ravilious, John Nash and two members of the British group of artists, the Ruralists, Anne Ovenden and David Inshaw and two British contemporary artists that work in this medium, James Lynch and Anna Sweeten.  Another English artist has remained with me since my times as a student, the British metaphysical painter Cecil Collins. 

I have also been greatly encouraged by looking at the work of artists that are known for the use of egg tempera, American artists, Andrew Wyeth, George Tooker and Robert Vickrey, Irish artist Fergus Ryan.

In conclusion two inspirational quotes from the late Fergus Ryan, the Irish egg tempera artist.

‘I think my primary emotion is a sort of solitude in timelessness, an experience of time suspended for a measurable moment, a glimpse of the ‘presence of absence’.

‘But the ancient landscape is far from empty, it is everywhere filled with ‘the presence of absence’.

CHRISTINE ALLMAN