about
Painting is an intensive experimentation,
…to find a personal language in the highly sensual medium of oil painting that could be rich enough to match the ecstatic experience we all feel when we’re in nature. I’m looking for a joyful landscape expressionism. I’m not interested in finding the anxieties of mankind in nature. I look deliberately through a fixed prism of sensual, childlike wonder and delight.
This comes from long consideration to a philosophical conclusion that only nature matters now and we must attend to our love for it and nurture that above all else. So the most important role for artists today is to focus on the beauty of nature, in the hope of developing and strengthening our passion and care for it.
I’m a citizen of the world first and foremost so my work is not about a specific geographical location. That’s too personal and nationalistic. I want a more universal message than that. The subject of my painting is the feeling of being in nature, a universal joy and pleasure. So it’s not about geography, it’s the joy that matters.
A mentor and guide for me is the great poet Laurie Lee who honed and crafted a language to conjure a landscape of lush sensual memory, a place of delight and desire, vividly nostalgic, rich in sensual and erotic pleasures, “busy with scent and bees, burned all over with hot yellow flowers”, “flooded in the honeyed tides of summer”.
I’d like to craft such a language, but in paint.
So this calls for the study, practice and development of the full potential of oil painting from colour to glazing, layering, impasto and crucially, development of my human touch to convey in the physicality of brushed gestures of coloured joy, the ravishing delight nature gives, that’s so essential to preserving our well being.
Painting is performance, and it needs to be a wonderful, joyful carnival, to thrill and lighten the spirit. Painting needs to celebrate the greatest subject of all…nature.
What matters is the pursuit of happiness, our joy in nature, her fields and flowers, trees and great watercourses, while we remember the transitoriness of life and the very profound importance of our of pleasure in nature that I hope inspires our greater care for it.
c.v.
Born in London, England, 1956.
Lives and works at Tuckingmill, Tisbury Wiltshire.
EDUCATION
BA Hons Fine Art, University of North London
| EXHIBITING | |||
| 2024 | From Word To Wonder; Artworks Inspired by Books, group show at the Slade Centre, Gillingham, Dorset.
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| 2023 | Recommence exhibiting as a landscape painter.
Darkness To Hope, Atkinson Gallery, Millfield School, Somerset. A themed show to mark the emergence from the pandemic.
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| 2021 | Construction of new home completed. Moved into new house and studio. Began painting again. The events of the previous years and the covid lock-down instigated a fundamental shift in artistic direction requiring new practices. I turned from abstraction to landscape painting. A new beginning.
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| 2020 | Management and oversight of construction work on the rebuilding of my new home with internal painting studio.
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| 2018 | Began working on designs for the demolition and rebuilding of my home to include a purpose made painting studio.
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| 2016 | Cessation of exhibiting as an abstract artist.
This year I made a decision to cease exhibiting. I began painting in oil exclusively, a medium that required intense long term study. I also became involved in projects that were of profound importance in developing the philosophy of my interests. I assisted a friend in designing and building a garden. Also worked closely with a local architect to design an eco house in a conservation area.
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| 2015 | Royal West of England Academy Autumn Show, Bristol. Hicks Gallery Wimbledon,. Group Show.
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| 2014 | Hicks Gallery Wimbledon., Group Show.
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| 2012 | Affordable Art Fair, New York, with Jeni Weinberger.
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| 2011 | Debut Contemporary. Selected for Debut Contemporary; a professional development platform in Notting Hill Gate, London, designed to assist artists to turn their practice into a viable business.
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| 2010 | Sunday Times Sponsored Royal Watercolour Competition, Mall Galleries, London.
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| 2009 | Globe Gallery, Weybridge, group show.
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| 2008 | Selected to headline the group show “Colour Rush” at Salisbury Art Centre with Ursula Leach and Brian Bishop.
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| 2007 | Shortlisted for the Celeste art prize.
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| 2005 | Solo show of abstract watercolour paintings at the Bettles Gallery, Ringwood, Hampshire.
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| 2004 | Solo Show of landscapes at Salisbury Playhouse Gallery. Wiltshire.
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| 2003 | Returned to Wiltshire. Bought a cottage at Tuckingmill, Tisbury and began painting full time in the medium of watercolour.
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| 1980 -2003 | Based in London working as a fashion photographer. | ||