From the studio

I send out email newsletters most weeks, sharing some of the creative things I come across day to day in my world of art and art education. You will find some past newsletters below, but if you’d like to receive them each week by email, you can sign up here. Recent newsletters (2025): 28th March21st…

When Lucy Mcorban’s Mayfair gallery trail popped up on Instagram the other day, I thought it would be a good idea to add her recommendations to my post from last summer about planning a gallery trail. So here are the two combined. Firstly, Lucy’s Mayfair trail. Check for opening days and times before heading off.…

I was drawn to Wilfrid Wood’s painting (above) at the Bankside Gallery yesterday. I think I like goal posts in paintings. Not sure why. I’ll have a think about it. I’ve added a few more goal posts in paintings below that have caught my eye in the past. Danny Markey George Shaw Diana Sandetskaya You’ll…

RWS Open
 ExhibitionBankside Gallery, London 
Ends March 23rd The annual RWS Open competition and exhibition is open to any non RWS member who would like to enter work produced using water-based media. The Bankside Gallery exhibition is therefore an excellent opportunity to get a sense of where contemporary water-based painting is today. Congratulations to all…

Huge congratulations to Studio Fridays mentee Elise Mendelle, who has been working SO hard recently! After the success of her solo show at Henarch Galleries only a couple of weeks ago, she was back in East London for the Other Art Fair. Taking part in the Other Art Fair involves four full on days of…

‘For his fascinating series “Favorites” (2013-2015), German artist Jan-Hendrik Pelz asked 66 artists to tell him their favorite film and give an arbitrary series of numbers as a time code. He then stopped the films at the relevant point and converted the resulting unforeseeable stills into oil paintings.’ (Extract from www.onartandasthetics.com) Below are some more…

For my painting classes on Wednesday this week, I presented students with a range of postcard sized pieces of canvas, board and papers to test out and compare. I feel that finding the right surface to paint on is so important. A bad painter might well be right to blame their tools! Apart from testing…

I had a lovely day today in the studio with my painting students. For both sessions, I delivered a lesson about investigating Impressionist mark making. It was designed to encourage students to consider their own mark making moving forward. If you fancy a go yourself, here’s an overview of the session. Part 1: Name the…

I’ve started listening to the excellent BBC Radio 4 series, ‘Moving Pictures’. During each episode, experts talk about one artwork, in detail, for thirty minutes. They also provide you with a link to a high resolution image of the artwork for you to look at whilst they describe it. I had a thought though; how…

The subject matter for my paintings over the past few years has been the photographs on my phone storage. I use them to revisit and reconnect with some of the fleeting moments I’ve snapshotted for some reason or another. Our photo-streams have become a sort of visual DNA of our lives and what makes us…