Simon Ford

I was born on 1968 and raised in North Otago, I have enjoyed painting since I was a teenager but it was only in the last 5 years that I decided to knuckle down and learn the craft on a deeper level. Most of my work is painted with oils but I have recently been dabbling with Casein paint , ( milk paint). This was the paint that alot of the old masters used, it is the perfect substrate for oil paints. One of the hardest things about painting is to be faced with a blank canvas. The blank canvas represents the greatest distance between your idea and it coming to fruition. It is traversing this space between your idea and the canvas that is the exciting part for me, Employing differing techniques, using a variety of tools brushes to apply paint, all create a kind of dynamic tension as you try to get your idea onto the canvas. This creates a kind of technical narrative which you can read on the painted surface, this is what excites me about painting and what I look for in other art.

It is in the technical narrative of the painting that the artist leaves their fingerprint.