

bowl by jean-nicholas gerard…
This series is called “of the earth” inspired by the great French ceramicist Jean-Nicolas Gerard. The writer Sebastian Blackie describes the man and work; “his forms are robust and energetic and have the simple but profound beauty and spontaneity that shines out from those who are alive and happy”.
His pots, plates, cups and bowls are made and decorated with a bold and eccentric playfulness that gives joy. Made of clay his work is literally “of the earth”. The light and colour of his local Provençal landscape, a great source of inspiration for Van Gogh, is also embedded in every piece.
Used daily as inspirational vessels for food and drink his work has that grounded, every-day spiritual quality that reminds us what to value, enjoy and how to live.
The paintings in my series “of the earth” are likewise intended to give that same daily pleasure and reminder…
beauty of the
earth…
summer
promise
me…

oil on canvas 90 x 130 cms
to paint is to revel in the dance and drama of colour…
Colour, choreographed into a play of pleasure, to evoke the overwhelmingly intense joy and sensuality at the heart of nature and life.
Colour is rejected by some as infantile, vulgar, oriental, narcotic, feminine, superficial, cosmetic but I love all these qualities and above all I find colour richly sensuous, intoxicating and mysterious.
Somewhere, over the rainbow, colour is a regained innocence, a liberty, a ravishing delight, subversive and passionate. As it spreads, flows, bleeds, stains, floods, soaks, seeps and merges, it echoes nature.
Colour is a way of describing and celebrating the moment, here, now and grappling with the serious business of the pursuit of joy which our natural world can spark and fire in us.

oil on canvas 90 x 130 cms
half yawned summer
hours…

oil on canvas 90 x 130 cms
melting
rubies
which it hid…

oil on canvas 90 x 130 cms
the earth…
“Into the tiny chapel at Vence, Matisse poured an encyclopaedia of global art. What sustained Matisse was his conviction that people shared the same universal message. What the Matisse chapel delivers is the instinctive sense that redemption and the pleasure of the senses belong together; the idea that you got salvation from happiness. He thought ultimately that’s what art had to deliver and what we need now.”
Simon Schama
Civilisation




“I don’t see why you shouldn’t be making yourself happy. Enjoying yourself. Feasting on beauty. I want an art that’s going to make me feel heady, in a high flown way. I love the idea. I’d use the word spiritual. I’m not frightened of all that. I want paintings to be uplifting.”
Gillian Ayres.
and she gave him
tall cup
by jean-nicholas gerard…

ah, fill the cup
what matters it to repeat
how time slips beneath our feet,
unborn tomorrow and dead yesteday
why care if today
be sweet….
the rubaiyat…

Get out

Go on