The Colour Gold

Thumbing through wallpaper books is one of my guilty pleasures. It’s usually when I have a deadline that I go into Stowmarket and head up to the upholstery shop to see if there any new wallpaper or fabric books that have been discontinued… they inspire me.

At the end of 2023 one of the books I brought home had lots of gold in it. I love gold.

When I composed this I couldn’t help but think about the Italian homes I’d visited in the late 80s when we lived in Rome. Italian women always wore gold shoes then, and so did I. Admittedly, I have had a taste for gaudy forever.

“Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west,”  Elizabeth Barrett Browning egg tempera on panel, 27 x 26 cm, November 2023

At our Heart of Suffolk exhibition, many people seemed to respond to the painting. It didn’t ‘paint itself’ and I wasn’t sure the gold was working as I was painting. I liked it though. It turned out others did too and it was the first painting of mine to sell.

She Sings to Flowers
egg tempera on panel, 20 x 30 cm, December 2023

Between Heart of Suffolk and when our houseguests arrived for the holidays, I painted She Sings to Flowers. That gold wallpaper was still in my head and that painting is one of two that has been selected for the 2024 Royal Society of British Artists exhibition. It turns out it’s OK to be obsessed by gold and to bring home wallpaper books sometimes.