`Poppy Pageant’

  Lisa Empson

I painted this watercolour during a workshop with Yorkshire artist Susan Neale, who I discovered on a York Open Studios trail. I was experimenting with wet on wet, the layers being built up gradually on a wet paper. At first I thought this painting was a mess but so many people enjoy it that I have come to love it too, despite one fellow at a craft fair who, when his wife admired it, declared that “It looked like a monkey did it.” This was the moment when I realised that I had finally `come out’ as an artist – I no longer needed to please everyone.