The Way I Work

Much of my work is best categorised as "landscape", although that term perhaps needs to be qualified. The word "landscape" popularly suggests "views". I am attracted also by close-up studies of natural objects, such as rocks or trees. Phil Hobbs has coined the phrase "a landscape within a landscape" to describe his own work, and I think that it fits well much of mine also. Another way of putting it might be to say that often my pictures fall somewhere between "landscape" and "still life".

I don't normally attempt to produce a finished piece of work in the open air. I do enjoy sketching in situ, but I also collect photographs and make notes, and the finished product is usually produced in the studio. There are three reasons for this.

Standing at a studio easel, rather than working out of doors, enables me to stand back and see my work developing much better. I like to establish the basics of a composition from my reference material, and then set this aside, responding to memory, imagination and the process of painting. Finally, I tend to work quite slowly—especially in the finishing stages of a picture—and can spend quite a long time just looking at it. Bearing in mind the usual vagaries of the British weather, it is much preferable to do this inside!

Working in the studio at an easel is the natural way of approaching those projects I would call perhaps "symbolist", such as my series responding to T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, or that in which I respond to Italian experience during the Great War (entitled "Presente!"). (See the relevant "galleries".) As my priorities have leaned more in this direction recently a greater proportion of my work is created in the studio, often using an inventive variety of reference materials to help the process along.

My first choice of medium for many years was pastels. I enjoy their immediacy and their tactile quality. Nevertheless, I do enjoy the challenge of working with other media, and in recent years have spent a lot of time with acrylics. I like the way in which it is possible to build up textured surfaces easily in this medium. It is refreshing every now and then to experiment with other media, such as egg tempera.

The challenge of attempting something new is irresistible. In 2014 my design for a pair of memorial windows for St. Alban's Church, Shrivenham, was accepted by the Defence Academy of the UK. In 2017 I accepted the invitation to design and execute a large mural for a climbing wall.