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

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

Step Over (Chysauster)

Oil on canvas, 40 x 40 cm (03/05/17)

This is the first painting started and completed in my new studio. It was painted while the studio was "open" for Open Studios West Berkshire and North Hampshire.

It's painted from my photograph of the steps over a Cornish Hedge on the approach to Chysauster, an iron age village in Cornwall.

Kernow Blue

It's not often that I get to go to Cornwall during the bluebell season, but this weekend, I was in Cornwall and I did go down to the woods to paint. Again, though, I was too early for the full blue-carpet effect, but this did allow for wood anemones and - in the distance - wild garlic to peep through.

Oil on canvas, 38 x 46 cm

Falmouth Harbour: Cranes and masts

Falmouth Harbour: Cranes and Masts

Industry and leisure, side-by-side in Falmouth harbour, both reaching for the sky.

Acrylic and Molotow marker on canvas board, 12 x 10"

Atlantic Surf

A winter seascape, waves crashing on the Cornish coast, colours that were there all along brought to the fore...

Oil on box canvas, 30 x 80 cm

£220

The Merry Maidens

This was painted in the Open Studio, from sketches and photographs, on Saturday 22 August.

It shows the Merry Maidens, a stone circle in Penwith, Cornwall, that we visited the week beforehand.

Oil on canvas, 40 x 80 cm

Solo Exhibition: Images of Cornwall

 

The exhibition space at the New Greenham Tandoori, run by the West Berkshire and North Hampshire Open Studios team, is roughly nine metres long. Ten of my Cornish knife-painted oils are on display there; the very widest view that I could manage only encompasses nine, so I've included two photographs.

The exhibition is on now and will run until October. The restaurant is open daily between 12 noon - 2pm and 5.30 - 11.30pm, closed Friday lunchtime. I gather that it is perfectly acceptable to wander in just to look at the art as long as they aren't very busy.

Praa Sands / The Prettiest Wave

The weather has been hot enough of late that the layers of this painting were pretty much dry after a day or two. I've been working on this in very short sessions, in between doing other, largely less interesting things and rediscovering Life Without the Internet (not by choice).

Oil on canvas, 40 x 80 cm

Botallack - Engine Houses and Gorse

I've had a few communication issues over the past week or so. For reasons that are not very interesting, I was simultaneously without reliable Internet access (although I did discover that the local public house has excellent free Wi-Fi) and without a car. Thankfully, both are now back, and I can show you a few new paintings...

The panoramic view above is called "Engine Houses and Gorse", and depicts Botallack, West Cornwall. They may not be mining tin (or copper) there anymore, but I am still mining the wealth of photographs that I took in Easter 2012.

Oil on box canvas, 30 x 100 cm

Botallack Count Houses and Newbury Lock

Botallack Count Houses

Two more - rather watery in theme - line and washes. Both were done from photographs using dip pens, acylic inks (sepia and white) and watercolour.

Enchanted Woods

This tree - in ancient woodland on the Pendarves estate in Cornwall - looked as if it might be enchanted even before I gave it the stained glass treatment. The central tree uses very nearly every colour of acrylic ink that I own, and the stained glass is retricted to three watercolours - phthalo blue, permanent rose and quinacridone gold.

Ding Dong (Ultramarine)

That really is the name of this place; Ding Dong engine house and mine on the moors at Penwith, Cornwall - close to Men-an-Tol.

The ultramarine is modified in places by red, but not, I think, enough to destroy the "flat" effect.

Ding Dong (Ultramarine)
Acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40 cm

To the Lighthouse

The light that day was phenomonal. Sharp against a gloomily dramatic sky, Godrevy Light presided over St. Ives Bay and the crashing waves, and I knew there was a splendid Godrevyscape for the taking. This large canvas was painted from a photograph taken from the clifftop at Easter.

Oil on canvas, 100 x 73 cm

On the Rocks

Are the waves wilder because of the rocks? Loosely based on a photograph take in Portreath, Corwall.

Oil on canvas, 30 x 100 cm

Inexorable

I find the sea - at its interface with the land - quite fascinating. Wild, untameable. inexorable and essentially, hypnotically repetitive.

A different palette here, in a nod to the natural linen support: two blues and three earth colours. And white. Utramarine was, of course, used in the sky along with burnt umber (and titanium white); the sea has a little of those colours, but phthalo blue - with burnt sienna and yellow ochre (not forgetting titanium white) dominates.

Oil on linen canvas, 30 x 30 cm

Linear

This is the finished version of the painting I was working on over the weekend (between visitors).

Based on a photograph taken on Porthtowan beach this August. A sort of companion piece to Curve.


Oil on natural linen canvas
38 x 61 cm

Tintagel Cove

I had a brief opportunity to visit Tintagel this August. It was packed full of people. I gave the castle (nice though it is) a miss and went down to the cove, where I made a sketch and took lots of photographs.

Curve - SOLD

The starting point for this was a photograph taken from the beach at Porthtowan when I was there to look at the view from East Cliff.

Porthtowan

This painting - a commission - was a fabulous challenge: a two-metre-long palette-knife-oil painting of the view from a cottage on East Cliff, Porthtowan, Cornwall. Slightly complicated by the necessity of "removing" the newer buildings further down the slope that obscured the view of the beach.