ARTIST’S STATEMENT
Painting has always been my most absorbing passion and my greatest joy. Appreciating the works of other painters, be they historical figures or living artists, always gives me great pleasure as well. From an early age I loved to paint and as a young teenager I discovered my ability to draw and paint an excellent likeness of a live sitter. Portraiture in pastels, especially of children, was my main interest in painting as a young woman in Africa, where I was born, and I sold quite a lot of work there.
However, when I came to live in the north-west of Western Australia in 1973, with two young children to care for, I studied art teaching by correspondence through what was then called the West Australian Institute of Technology. Later, living in Perth, Melbourne and on Bougainville Island, Papua New Guinea, I studied commercial art, and my passion for drawing and painting flowers and plants in watercolour began. Though I’ve painted in oils, acrylics, pen and ink with watercolour wash, and pastels, my true love is watercolour. No other medium has the brilliance, transparency, subtlety, immediacy, challenge of watercolour. No other medium has the ability to touch my soul and move my spirit like watercolour does. Now, put watercolour to work for you painting flowers, and you have the unadulterated magic of painting. I know that many people love flowers as much as I do, and many people have graciously bought my paintings and enjoy them in their homes, for which I am eternally grateful. I have been fortunate enough to sell many, but my chief pleasure is painting them, seeing them framed and hanging in galleries and exhibitions, and knowing that people love them enough to buy them.
Probably three-quarters of the way through my life now, I hope I live long and healthy, and continue to learn and grow and produce better work each time I paint. There are literally hundreds of ideas for flower paintings and for still life paintings in watercolour in my mind and soul, just waiting to be developed through my pencil and brush. The true artist is never done learning, and the muse always inspires, beckoning me with a siren song to travel on the sea of the artist’s life, sometimes becalmed in peaceful sunlight, sometimes buffeted roughly in wild storms, but always passionate and wanting to paint.
I hope you enjoy viewing my paintings as much as I enjoy painting them.
Best wishes
Carol-Lynn Bond