I stand on the brink; A scrap of ground where the North East meets the untameable majesty of the North Sea. A spectacle indeed. I absorb the experience. Words dance around my head: Aggressive. Intimidating. Unadulterated. Fierce. Cleansing. Harmonious. Respect. Nurturing. Necessary. Violent. Indiscriminate. Cyclic. Alive. Giving. Affirming. Exhilarating. I make marks; a basic need to create — something. To communicate… this something. This Otherness. I Paint.
It's taken an age for me to get myself organised to actually give a **** about how I document my work. You may (or may not) have noticed that I've recently updated the images in the "paintings" section of this website. Previously I've snapped my paintings with an iPhone. Now, iPhone's have very decent built-in cameras on the whole, but they're simply not suited to capturing (with accuracy) flat objects against a wall - you know, like a painting. Above you'll see two images - the first was shot on…
"So... What do you paint?" He asked. Arrgggh! This is a dreaded question but it's always asked once the topic of What do you do? is broached. "I'm an Artist." "Oooh, what kind of art?" ...and so on. Not only is it difficult to describe to non-arty people, but it's actually very difficult to describe in words to oneself -- that's why I PAINT as opposed to, say...write?. I thought it might be a good exercise to attempt some sort of description here, though - at least to thrash out…
I’m sat here in my studio; my home studio, as I await word on the date when I can collect the keys to my new studio in the town centre. I am wondering what to paint. There’s nothing unusual in that, not for me anyway. I work in a way that might be described as flying by the seat of my pants. There’s a way that I think paintings should be made - or perhaps, how a painting should look. There are subjects that I feel compelled to paint about;…
This painting is part of an ongoing investigation into the structures that make up my local landscape. Creating largely monochrome studies allows me to explore structure rather than form.
This is one of the first paintings made in response to my never-ending pursuit to understand the landscape that I paint. Working in colour (I wonder) allows me to concentrate on atmosphere and form but the results are difficult to make sense of back in the studio. Limiting the pallet to practically monochrome allows me to concentrate more on the structure of the landscape; how it's actually put together and, hopefully I can use that information to structure the studio paintings.