Virginia Ridgley
I mainly paint with oils on canvas although I use other media as time, place, space and subject demand. My work is about what grabs me, sometimes from a fleeting impression. It may be how I feel about a thing, or from constant observation.
Whatever it is, shouts at me as I go past, maybe even demands that I go back for another look. It might still be there or I might never find it again. Then, all I have is what is left in my head. There are things that I want to capture and hold and have for my own. I will use whatever I can to abstract my sense of the essence of them.
Sketches and photos leave bits out, put in too much and get colours wrong. But these are the tools I use to record. Sometimes the camera surprises me by seeing things I missed.
This is what happened with the mud paintings. When we first came to the Redlands in 1969, the year of the first moonwalk, I avoided the wet, brown, smelly mudflats. I didn’t see them with a painter’s eye. Years later and many countries on, I walk them often, enjoying the impressions left by the ebb and flow of the tides, the patterns, peeling, curling and the footprints. This time, the camera saw the extent of the colours.
Walking home enjoying the sunset, I see the patterns of ebb and flow again. From the moon’s perspective, these patterns cover the earth. In trying to keep the moments of discovery and excitement alive during the long, hard slog of composition, drafting and painting, I often wonder, is this what I meant?