Making Things Up

Hello everyone!

Spring is here and its so wonderful to see the landscape coming to life. This is one of my favourite times of year for painting. After months of incarceration I can get out and paint in the field. 

Painting plein air brings the immediacy of an environment into a painting. It gives the work an organic quality and vitality, capturing the essence of place. The painter becomes a conduit between the landscape and the painting. 

After initial painting outside, the work is brought back to the studio to develop. It is here that I begin to create ‘a version’ of what I originally observed. Becoming consumed with colour and surface and letting the painting intuitively lead me, I take risks with colour and form, always seeking something fresh and unexpected. I have never forgotten a student saying to me on a painting course “you’re just making things up”. She illuminated for me the essence of my practice. All my landscapes have their beginnings in observation, and then they take on a life of their own. 

Speaking of wonderful places to "make things up," I'm incredibly excited to announce my Artist in Residence for a Year at the breathtaking Yorkshire Arboretum! I'm honoured to be spending 2025 immersed in this stunning garden of trees, capturing its beauty through the changing seasons. The culmination of this year-long project will be an exhibition in 2026, and I can't wait to share my interpretations of this incredible space with you.

And for those of you eager to join me on this artistic journey, I'm delighted to announce two new painting courses for 2025:

1. Landscape Painting Course - The Yorkshire Arboretum (6-7 October 2025):

What better place to explore the art of landscape painting than amidst the inspiring beauty of the Yorkshire Arboretum? Join me for a two-day immersive experience, where we'll delve into the techniques of capturing the essence of a place, both outdoors and in the studio. Find all the details and booking information on the courses section of my website.

2. Funky Florals - Huttons Ambo (28-29 June 2025):

If you're looking for a more free-spirited approach to painting, join me for "Funky Florals" at Huttons Ambo! This course is all about unleashing your creativity and exploring the vibrant world of abstract florals. We'll be experimenting with colour, mark-making, and paint techniques, drawing inspiration from vases of flowers and our own imaginations. Expect a fun, energetic, and freedom-enhancing weekend! Details and booking are available on the courses section of my website.

I hope to see you either in the studio or amongst the trees at the Yorkshire Arboretum!

Happy Painting!

Trees and Molehills

The Yorkshire Arboretum

(Work in progress) 

Cross Fertilisation

This year I plan to make a collection of smaller paintings both for York Open Studios and for my end of year exhibition at Gallery Fort Nine in Bridlington. As well as new paintings, I have begun a body of work on paper, both Landscapes and Abstract Floral. These will be available at York Open Studios in April this year. I think my style is changing again into something more loose and wild. I look forward to sharing these with you.

A lot of my work takes place in my brain, before putting pen to paper. I walk and look and look again, in the outstanding countryside where I live, in all weather and at every time of year. I like to store images away and re-arrange them before I begin drawing, to think deeply about how I will describe what I see. The work is as much about how a landscape ‘feels’ as how it looks.

This imbibing of how a landscape ‘feels is perfect preparation for my Abstract Florals where all those feelings come out. Here I work entirely from my imagination which provides a wonderful release from the more closely observed discipline of my landscapes. I realise that, my love of nature and the hours spent observing landscape, comes out in my abstract floral paintings. This could be seen as a sort of cross fertilisation.

Death and Rebirth

“Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the earth. There are hundreds of ways to find your way home.”

— Rumi

It has been a long time since I’ve blogged. My father has been ill for several years and died in February this year. This has greatly affected my work output. When a loved one is ill everything else diminishes in importance. The grieving process is something familiar to all of us; yet it seems a very lonely and personal thing as we all grieve in different ways. I am working through the process since his death of trying to start to live fully and work again. To find the joy in life as he would have wanted me to.

Enchanted Garden

My new paintings for 2023 seem like something of a landmark, a rebirth. Some of them are brand new and others were begun several years before. It is only recently that I have had the time and mental space to bring them to fruition. They are all a celebration of the natural world and the solace it brings. The world of trees and plants, sun, moon, river and sea are the gifts that keep on giving. At times they are the greatest comfort available. It is difficult not to see nature as a set of individual deities, as gods in their own right. Nothing built with such exquisite perfection could have happened by accident. Recent work follows the tradition of paintings before. New paintings such as ‘Tales of the Riverbank’, ‘The Holme Tree’ ‘Enchanted Garden’ and ‘Walk Towards Ravenscar’ all celebrate and pay homage to the restorative power of the natural world. In the cycle of nature is all our lives, the inner states, the outer changes, the constant endings and beginnings, the deaths and rebirths.

I apologise for the cancellation of all exhibitions and teaching for this year but am delighted to be still taking part in North Yorkshire Open Studios. This will take place June 3rd-4th and 10th-11th . I hope you can make it.