Prussia Cove cliffs

Prussia Cove Cliffs, oil on linen canvas, 46 x 55 cm

Prussia Cove is a secluded part of the south Cornish coast, with a turbulent history of wrecking and smuggling. Now, however, it is known for its natural beauty and an International Music Seminar. When the tide is in, the beach is all rocks, pebbles and rock pools. Here I have focussed on the cliffs, which had some reddish vegetation clinging to them. I don't know what it was, but I do like the extra colour, which drew my attention away from the sea back towards the land.

Prussia Cove Cliffs
oil on linen canvas, 46 x 55 cm

£360

Blue and Gold

Blue and Gold, oil on canvas 46 x 55 cm

A reprise, of sorts, of 2016's Gold and Grey, this is a view from a local footpath. These distinctive trees are visible for miles around and are a welcome landmark as well as a favourite subject.

Blue and Gold

oil on canvas, 46 x 55 cm

£340

Arctic Corsair

The Arctic Corsair is the last of Kingston-Upon-Hull's side-winder trawlers, efectively the last remnant of the city's fishing fleet. She currently lies on the mud in the river Hull by the museum quarter and is a museum ship herself. She has been there since 1999 (after the time I lived in Hull) but there is talk of moving her to a dry dock in the near future.

The painting is based on a couple of sketches that I made in January 2016. There is a little artistic licence in a few places - the riverfront warehouse on the right, for example, is a complete fabrication! The jagged red brick edifice in the background, in front of the cream-coloured Shotwell building, on the other hand, was there and was in approximately that shape when I drew the Corsair and her surroundings. It was partially demolished and looked rather like a post-industrial castle.

Arctic Corsair

Oil on canvas, 55 x 46 cm

£200

Entrance (Chysauster)

I find prehistoric sites entrancing: open to the elements, often in (relatively) remote locations, they are refreshing in their wild freedom yet retain a palpable sense of history. I also rather like painting stones.

This is the entranceway to one of Chysauster's "courtyard" huts. Chysauster, in west Cornwall, is a remarkably well preserved iron age village managed by English Heritage.


My painting was made last week while my studio was open as part of Open Studios West Berkshire and North Hampshire. There's still just over a week of Open Studios left; you'll find my dates and details here.

Entrance (Chysauster)

Oil on canvas, 55 x 46 cm

£190

The Red Trees

These imaginary trees have been hanging around for a while. The painting has changed a bit since I started it in August...

 

It was always intended to be bright and stylised, but I softened it a bit and made it less rigidly perpendicular.

Oil on canvas, 55 x 46 cm

Pickfords

This - worked up from a photograph that I took just over a year ago - has been a long time in the painting. I started it before Easter, and - because it is such a complex subject - didn't manage to finish it before the school holidays started. I rarely get the chance to paint in the studio during the school holidays. As soon as the children went back to school, I was busy preparing for the Reading Contemporary Art Fair.

The paint was surface-dry when I went back to it today. This isn't really a problem, unless there is a lot of texture that I'm trying to paint over (it's a bit like an acylic knife painting in that respect), and I had been aware that a long interval was a strong possibility, so I had deliberately minimised the impasto.

As it happened, a dry surface was quite useful. I discovered that a colour shaper (effectively a solid silicon paintbrush) would lay down paint very effectively onto a reasonably smooth layer of dry oil; this is how I managed to write the word, "Pickfords" on the roof of the foremost building.

This building and its roof inscription give the painting its name. As far as I can make out, Pickfords no longer occupy this building, which is in Nottingham (the elevated view is from Nottingham Castle). In fact, it appears - from Google's Street View images (dating from September 2014) - to be under development.

Pickfords
Oil on canvas, 55 x 46 cm

Frobury Blue

This is a plein air painting from yesterday that I did a little extra work on this morning, mainly to restate the contrasts between the darks and the lights.

Unusually, I had company on this painting expedition. My friend, Rose, joined me for both the walk and the paint. She worked in acrylics while I stuck to my favoured plein air medium of oils. We were specifically looking for a good display of bluebells and ended up back at the first wood that we passed through, having walked three or four miles to look at an alternative.

It's a good job that we both enjoy walking!

The tall , hollow, tree stump was the focus of both of our paintings. In fact, the bluebells were almost incidental.

Frobury Blue

Oil on canvas, 46 x 55 cm

More bluebells en plein air an be found here: 3 Years of Plein Air Bluebells

Kingsclere Downs - SOLD

This is the view from (almost) the top of The Dell, a road-cum-track that rises out of the village of Kingsclere in north Hampshire.

Ironstone

Once upon a time, they quarried ironstone here; there are even mine workings where, I imagine, there was a particularly good seam.

Lowland Spring (Ashford Hill National Nature Reserve)

Yesterday was my first opportunity for a painting expedition this year. I thought to myself, surely the bluebells are out by now (they are late this year on account of spring being reluctant to show its face). So I laced up my boots and headed for the nearby bluebell woods.

There were some bluebells, but there were a lot more bluebell leaves. Maybe the woodland floor will be carpeted in blue next week...

So I kept on walking, getting slightly lost once or twice at the interface of the two maps I had with me. I was looking for a subject, but wasn't inspired enough to stop until just shy of two o'clock, by which time I was both hungry and concerned that I would run out of time.

Avebury Sheep

Way back in 2007, when my daughter was still learning to walk (it must have been spring), I took her to Avebury, with her pushchair. I also took an old-school 35mm SLR loaded with monochrome film.

My photographs weren't all what you'd call stunning; in fact, the source for this painting was a little underwhelming, technically. I think I got the exposure wrong. But the composition worked, I thought; and I loved the two lambs sheltering in the lee of the stone. And there was enough information to make a painting... if you ignored the fact that there were no colours.

So I made the colours up. Based on what I remembered, and what I knew...

I remembered that the stones were reddish. I looked them up: they are sarsens. Sarsens are sandstone (which explains some of the weathering). Sandstone varies quite a lot in colour, but does tend towards the red and the yellow.

This post has been republished with an improved photograph of a slightly improved painting (I have darkened the shadows on and around the foreground lambs).

Oil on canvas, 55 x 46 cm
27 December 2012
For sale

Grey Wethers and Black Bullocks

I couldn't resist calling these beasts bullocks, despite there being no absolute evidence to support this, and me being sufficiently unfamiliar with bovine appearance to say for certain that these are male animals.

Why is this?

New Forest Heather 5 - Blasted Tree

Blasted TreeFinished
(daylight)

I started off by telling myself that I was just going to do the sky... but then there was too much blue left, so I made it into green ... and purple ... and before I knew it the painting had progressed to this stage and it was way past bedtime.

In progress
(artificial light)

Oops.

It took a couple of days before I was able to find the time to work on it again, but eventually I did, and this is the result. The photography, of course, took even longer; domestic artificial light doesn't work very well with my rudimentary set-up, so I had to wait for the weekend. 


Oil on canvas, 55 x 46 cm
26 November 2012