I studied Illustration at the West of England College of Art in my home town of Bristol from 1969-1972, leaving with a First Class Honours Degree. I followed a successful career as a freelance illustrator for over thirty years, painting for pleasure in my spare time. I have lived in the Somerset countryside since moving away from Bristol in 1986. I am married with two children.
Much of my work as an illustrator was for clients such as The National Trust, The Forestry Commission, and English Nature, producing highly detailed bird’s-eye views that also had all the topographical accuracy of maps. Often the only way to gather source material for these was to cover the entire area on foot, making sketches and taking photographs. This strengthened my abiding love of the English landscape, at the same time as developing my eye for placing telling details within the context of much bigger forms.
I paint landscapes. My canvasses reflect my strong emotional response to the timelessness of the West Country in all its outstanding beauty. I am excited by the chance arrangements of line and form that can occur within the landscape – the ways in which the tension of linear features (sometimes just roads, hedges, or cropmarks) can interact with and accentuate the larger shapes of land masses. I am also strongly drawn to places where traces of a more distant past still exist to add depth to the present, particularly open or hilltop sites. For me, this powerful atmosphere, although manifestly not visible, certainly seems tangible. I strive to bring this additional layer to my paintings in which the ‘spirit of place’ may be perceived: it may inform the work and hopefully become part of it.
Over and above everything else that really makes a landscape sing for me, is the magical quality of the light – especially low sunlight at the beginning or end of the day – that enhances and defines everything upon which it falls. The search for ways to best capture these effects in paint is an ongoing preoccupation for me – as it has been for countless artists before me.
My paintings have been shown in galleries throughout the South West, and I also participate in Somerset Art Weeks. I hope you enjoy looking at them!