Janice Branley

I've always made things. My earliest memories
are of creating from whatever I could lay my hands on.
A love of drawing led to a degree in textile design.
The limitations of that led to a master of arts degree,
which was really an excuse for me to paint on massive
pieces of wool and silk.

Years followed where I lived on ever smaller Scottish
islands, finally settling on the remote Hebridean
Island of Lewis over 20 years ago.

My paintings have never settled easily into a genre
and I am as liable to paint abstractly as figuratively.
The one thread seems to be a fascination with the
quality and colour of paint and the textural effects
that can be drawn from using it in different ways.
I've always preferred oils, finding the pigment more
intense and varied than acrylics. Over the last few
years I've experimented with raw pigments and
ground paint to my own recipes.

Sculpture is a passion that has hi-jacked my life. I am
captivated by the stories that can be told by a figure,
the weight and presence of a 3 dimensional form.
Like dreams that cast shadows, a sculpture is a link
between the real and the unreal and that is the fine
line on which an artist likes to tread.