Jo Oakley

Jo Oakley

“Searching my heart for it’s true sorrow.

This is the thing I find to be

That I am weary of words an people

Sick of the city

Wanting the sea’

A poem by Edna St. Vincent Millais

Although written in the early 1900s these words echo my feelings about

living in the city and yearning to spend time at my beach hut on the

southeast coast today. My new collection of paintings are about this experience.

As well as the observations in the landscape I have worked on capturing two different aspects

of how time is spent there. Collecting treasures from the shore, reading, writing an watching.

The interior has its own story, a mixture of objects inherited from past owners and my own addments’, fading  fabrics of times gone by.

The paintings are on canvas, the surface is built up and scraped away.

Subtleties in this process help to create the richness and depth that  communicates these

different aspects for me.