Samantha Humphreys

When I was a little girl in the late nineteen seventies, my first glimpse of what a real life adult artist looked like was through the magic of a television advert for cadburys flake. In the advert, a pretty lady in a cool outfit sits down in a field of poppies with her watercolour paints. Two of my favourite things in one advert, chocolate and art, of course I was influenced, I even thought it was brilliant that she embraced the rain that ‘spoiled’ her painting.

During my summer walks, now, as an adult chocolate eating artist, I can’t help remembering this advert (singing the song in my head too) when I walk along the golden fields that bloom with splatters of all kinds of colour and with the changing light and direction, the same field can change from hues of greens and yellows to more muted tones of ochres with stalks of an almost rose gold under the direct sunlight.

It amuses me that the advert appealed to my younger self and it resonates still with me now and echoes with many strands of my life. I do like to walk through and around fields although-not through grasses higher than my shins for many reasons: insects, trip hazards and unknown substances to name a few, plus, I do not want to be ‘surprised’ by any rodents!

I will never tire of making art based on the environments I walk in whether I am photographing, drawing, painting or printing and I am also more in awe of the art process than the final outcome, I have used rain falling from the sky as a medium and, I think I wear cool clothes.

I mainly eat cadburys flakes in a 99 flake ice cream though, and never, ever while on a field walk.