Hello, and welcome to my website!  I am a landscape painter deriving most of my inspiration from Wales and the Derbyshire Peak district.  I've tried to present some of my works and perhaps give some insight into how and why they arrive in the form in which you see them.  I hope you enjoy browsing through them, and should any  appeal enough, most are for sale at prices from £60 upwards depending on the work and whether you want to buy it mounted or framed, or I can arrange for a limited edition print, A4 size, at consderably less cost.  If you have an idea for something you would like in my style, I'm always prepared to discuss commisioned works.  Contact details are listed on the site. 

            Anyone who pauses to look at the landscape of the British Isles will realise quickly that our rapid variations of   weather and light causes what we see to be constantly changing.  Areas of lightness and darkness interchange, and colours fluctuate in intensity.  Rarely is anything still.  Then, there are the subtler responses of hearing, smell and perhaps taste to consider.  There is our awareness that the land we see was here before we existed and will be here long after we are gone.  It has stimulated myths and figured in legends and stories.  It may have stimulated other poets, musicians, writers and artists to record their own responses.  It has probably rewarded, frustrated and perhaps even taken the lives of the hunters, farmers, miners, labourers and peddlers who walked here and worked the land before our time.  It evokes memories in us of other places and the people with whom we share our lives.  All these resonances and echoes are what I seek to portray in my work.  I try to evoke all these aspect of the landscape from which I started rather than make a topographical record of it.  I strive to look beyond the appearance of the land - to see its bones and inner organs – all the things we don’t immediately notice, but without which, any landscape remains just another view.  

            I am particularly interested in the quality of light and its effects on the landscape. I have no particular allegiance to   any media.  I work in whatever seems appropriate to what I want to say or do.  I often mix  media to produce a specific effect. My work almost always starts with drawing something I can see, to record its shape, form, colour and tone.  I do not want to be constrained by attempts at photographic reality. Each finished work involves making many drawings, working towards  the final statement. These might range from tentative scribbles to detailed ‘finished’ drawings. Each drawing distils some visual element or intuitive response from the starting point. Most of the finished pieces are developed in the studio from the many scribbles,  drawings, watercolours and pastels that fill my sketchbooks. I visit Wales and the Peak District regularly  for inspiration. Finding the pattern, structural qualities and atmospheres of the landscape are as important as depicting what I observe. I am fascinated by the problems of recession and perspective - making an illusion of three dimensions on a two-dimensional surface remains for me a particular delight.

            In order to progress as an artist I need to understand how we see and interpret our world.  I need to understand the visual elements of line, shape, form, tone colour, etc., and know something about how to use them.  I need to have control over the media and techniques I use.  I need to be aware of how other artists have resolved problems similar to those I confront.  My work is the process through which I try to deepen and enrich these understandings. All artists teach themselves continually about how they make their own works. The successful work has its genesis when I manage to blend these four understandings with my own intuitive response to the landscapes I experience.  

            In presenting my work here, I have included a section called the ‘Life Room’, since this is where I go to remind     myself that formal issues such as proportion and perspective, history and tradition still have meaning and validity     throughout the visual arts, and are neglected at our peril.  Without them, all our work is diminished.  Here there are    examples of drawings worked on for well over an hour and others completed within a few minutes.  Some of my art work develops alongside or from my poems and because they are appropriate I've included two such series here - The 'Solva' series in Gallery 5, and the 'earth air fire and water' series in  Gallery 6.  I have also chosen to open the pages of some of my sketchbooks since these are rarely seen in public, yet are the places where starting points are recorded and ideas and possibilities are tried, tested, rejected, amended and developed until some become more finished works.  

I hope my works appeal to you and creates some small resonance between your life and mine.