I just got back from a sailing holiday in Lanzarote and although I have finally decided that sailing is not really me, I was actually entranced by Lanzarote.  

For an artist, Lanzarote is a very visually exciting space. The very starkness and the black volcanic rock, sets off everything else which is not volcanic rock. The racing, puffy, ever changing cloudscape, the white buildings, the green sculptural cacti. The place is like a big gallery of blank spaces where everything that is in it has space to breath.

I am looking forward to producing a collection of Lanzarote paintings and am also applying for an Artist residency there next year. This has also shown me the new direction of my work which is to record very different landscapes in very different looking countries.

Really enjoyed painting this commission of Rosedale. Commissions are a great opportunity to hone painterly skills. In some ways I really liked the simplicity of the early stages but it had to be taken further and the brief was lots of warm colour.

Details of Rosedale

The finished result glows- Just like Rosedale in the evening sun.

'Rosedale'

Fantastic two day painting workshop in Huttons Ambo with students from far away places such as Wales and Australia. Thank you all so much you talented lot. The landscape around Huttons Ambo has been brought to life in a new and unique way. 

To find out more about future workshops, click here. 

Someone once sent me a little saying in an anonymous ‘share a special part of a poem with a stranger’ project. It went something like this...

In the darkest part of the dark night - the light comes.

At the time I tossed it to one side dismissively as somehow not coming up to the mark in the profundity I was seeking. However, it stayed with me and came to mind again when I made the arduous journey from ‘Helmsley Walled Garden’ to ‘Pots and Plants ’.

I have struggled with the Helmsley Walled Garden painting for over two years; Spent hours and much paint on trying to get it right. It has been finished several times, but I was never happy with it. The bonfire came to mind, I lost faith in my ability as a painter.

I was eventually reminded of what I teach my students. “You must sometimes destroy what you are most attached to in an image to make it come alive.” It was only when I did this that the painting began to have vitality and strength. How greatly is painting a mirror of life. Authenticity in painting must come from deep inside, never from the surface. This new image has surprising new marks. It is clean and fresh alive and dynamic.

Helmsley Walled Garden

Pots and Plants - work in progress

UPDATE - The finished painting!

Earth Song

I've been painting in the fields around Hutton's Ambo in this boiling hot weather. Painted on Birch ply with two coats of top quality Gesso, the work has reached new heights.

The Gesso is magical as it reacts with the paint in a living way. The boiling hot weather has added to the dramatic contrasts the bright sun has created between light and dark.

Homage To Bruce Chatwin's England’s Green Bowl

The Road Less Travelled

The Buttercup Field

During my residency in Burton Agnes Hall, Emilie Flower created the above video, documenting how I developed the range of paintings, 'Variations on a Vase.'

We have been sailing around the Saronic Islands and the Argolic Gulf in Greece. In-between pulling ropes I sometimes manage to squeeze in a few quick sketches to work into paintings when I return. 

The Greek islands are so bathed in light and beauty. So nice to be in an international sailing community where we share a harbour with people from France, Italy, Greece, Germany, The Ukraine, Serbia, America and Bangladesh; and doubtless others we haven't met yet. 

Looking forward to getting back into the studio while the memories are fresh.

Exhibition - Sunny Bank Mills, Leeds - 19th May to 2nd July

These new works were produced especially for the Lifelines exhibition at Sunny bank Mills. Exhibition from 19th May to 2nd July 2017.

Begun in Sri Lanka and completed while on an Artist residency at Burton Agnes Hall in East Yorkshire in the Elizabethan garden.

They experiment with new forms of mark- making derived from the patterns and impressions of plant forms. Using colours, printing techniques and gold leaf, the works are highly decorative abstractions which play with cross cultural ideas of ornamentation.

A short film of the creation of the work by Emilie Flower of PICA studios York is available to view online, please see below: