I’d like to give you some deep meaningful reason why I paint but the truth is I just love it! For me there is nothing quite like being in my studio with it’s odour of linseed oil, surrounded by colours, the physicality of pushing squidgy paint into canvas – it's pure joy. Working in my studio is when time becomes irrelevant. Creating art makes me feel good and when what I produce makes others feel good too, it’s the icing on the cake!
For many years I taught painting and it never ceased to amaze me how much my students missed through not looking properly at the world around them. There's so much more to see than can be taken in with a glance. We need to take a moment out of our busy lives to look, really look and if we can capture that moment in a picture it's with us forever.
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For the last few years my paintings have been mainly still-life, focusing on food. A keen cook, the subject's always available in the kitchen! I would like to think the food I paint evokes an aroma for the viewer that might trigger a memory of time past - a delicious meal eaten on a holiday or perhaps on a cold wintry day, seeing a painting of a luscious strawberry will remind them that hot summer days will come again!
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Like most artists, I’m fascinated by the effects of light on what I see around me. A successful will show how I see something and this will resonate or perhaps even give a new perspective to the viewer. My work is figurative, although currently I'm moving tentatively toward abstraction.
I work in oils and pastels, mostly traditionally but also using oil glazes with mixed media creating glowing colours over a textured ground. My choice of subject is eclectic – food, flowers, people, animals - whatever appeals in the moment, although now I do try to work in series. Sizes vary according to subject from small still-life of fruit and vegetables to large tryptichs.
My studio is in a converted barn at my home, a 17th century farmhouse in Northamptonshire that we have lovingly restored over the last 25 years. We have a large garden where we have created a beautiful lavender garden, lawns and herbaceous borders from former paddocks and a cattle yard. It’s all part of the creative process and a lot of the garden is now creeping into my paintings.
Some of the nice things people say about my paintings
