From the studio

Despite oil paints being my preferred medium, I dedicating the whole of 2024 to painting with watercolours, and the five years previous to mostly using acrylics. The reason I stopped using oils in 2018 was due to the slight chest pains I was getting from the fumes that came with using thinners. But now I’m…

In 2020 I made the short video, ‘In the Media’, to introduce the weekly challenge to students working at home during lockdown. The main part of the video consisted of eleven artworks, each made in response to an image found in the media. I can’t find the original file to cut out the now obsolete…

Personally, being an artist who, for whatever reason, feels compelled to find more and more detail in a subject at the risk of overworking, I keep two phrases in my mind: I asked Chat GPT for more, and it found me the following fourteen artist quotes. It suggests that they can be categorised into four…

I asked Chat GPT to describe my latest painting. Then I gave it a little nudge to look harder. This is what it came up with. It knows me well! Title: [Untitled – Sunrise Through Glass] Artist: Paul ReganMedium: Acrylic or oil on canvas (assumed)Dimensions: [Insert dimensions if known]Year: [Insert year if known] Description &…

I’ve just finished a tricky oil painting of the sun rising over Paris, viewed through a dirty, scratched hotel window, with reflections on, in La Defence.

The challenge I set students this week was to paint a black and white portrait from the photograph they bought in. The process involved using carbon paper to transfer their image on to their painting surface. This resulted in a lively debate, as it always does, about whether or not using a transfer process to…

I wanted to find some new art podcasts! I think I’ve listened to all the interviews with visual artists on the BBC’s Desert Island Discs and This Cultural Life, and I’ve caught up with the new episodes of The Banksy Story. I do still have a few Moving Pictures left to listen to, preferably whilst…

Dad with Martin Parr at Dorchester HospitalWatercolour on Paper14x19cm2025 I find hospitals disorientating and time bending. Whether we are a patient or a visitor, it doesn’t take long before our connection with the outside world fades and we start to feel a bit institutionalised. Coming across art in a hospital can be a pleasant distraction;…