From the studio

We’ve come to the end of yet another lovely term of teaching on Wednesdays, where students of all abilities come to enjoy the studio, and to learn more about painting and drawing. Whereas half of the sessions each term are given to teacher led workshops, challenging students outside of their comfort zones, the other half…

AI version of front cover After five years, I’ve finally finished making my photobook, ‘Gently Out Of Time’. The book arrived as a result of revisiting and rearranging more than twenty years of photographs stored on my phone and laptop. It’s a record of the recurring visual motifs and subjects that catch my eye every…

Memory is a strange thing isn’t it? Back in November I painted this tree, from a photograph I had taken at 9.20am on Thursday 12th December 2013. When I was painting it, I thought I was painting the tree I used to walk past on the way to the primary school my children went to…

I recently purchased a few books from the Tate Shop sale. One of them was this nice little collection of artworks on the theme of Spring. It’s divided into six sections: Into the Landscape, In the Garden, Agriculture, Rebirth, Blossoms and Blooms, and Uprising. If you were to make an artwork based on one of…

In class today, we were discussing ways of showing distance in landscape painting. To some extent, the same also applies to portraiture (get that tip of the nose coming forward), and still life. Composing a scene using perspective, and having foreground objects overlapping the ones behind is a good start, but also using warm, intense…

I started a short course in etching this week. It was strange being a student again after all these years of teaching. I haven’t etched for thirty years and have forgotten all the technicalities, which isn’t great when some of the process involves dipping zinc plates into acid! I had a search in my attic…

Tennis Court – 2025 – 45x60cm – Oil on board

Yellow Line – 2025 – Oil on board – 45x60cm