Rachel Hayes

I work in a studio space in the garden and love being inspired by nature. In particular I love bright and bold colours that I see in my flower borders, and I feel inspired every time I walk around the garden. As flowers, leaves and shapes can be found all year round I am never short of ideas. I love to represent flowers with simplified shapes as that is how I see them. Nature provides the palette and the ideas, and I apply to the canvas.
I love to start a canvas with random marks using oil pastels, charcoal or
water-soluble crayons. I then add acrylic paint using scrapers and other
tools to give random effects and start to create interest. I like to hide things in the painting such as tiny pencil drawings or shapes made by scratching into paint. I build up layers with paint and marks until I know what the painting is going to look like. Sometimes I have a loose idea when I start but other times it’s a complete unknown. I let my intuition guide me and find this much more freeing than trying to copy a photograph. I don’t copy reality; I create my own.