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

Devil's Den, or, The Resting Place - SOLD

Devil's Den, oil on linen canvas, 46 x 38 cm

The Devil's Den is a reconstructed (c. 1921) dolmen (neolithic) near Marlborough in Wiltshire. As far as I can tell, it is the closest such monument to where I live (there seems to be a shortage of suitable stone in Hampshire; certainly the chalk and flint in the immediate vicinity would make very poor building material). Dolmens, which look like stone tables, are actually the structural remains of burial chambers that were once covered in earth. Most have three or more uprights; this has two, but one of them rests on a third, recumbent stone. The stones are sarsens, which are blocks of sandstone created by glacial flow. They are plentiful in that area (which is not far from Avebury and Stonehenge).

I have visited the Devil's Den before, with sketching equipment, but this time I took my painting gear. It was a gloriously, unseasonably, hot and sunny day. I spent maybe two and a half hours on site and completed the picture in the studio, where I empasised the darks (which have a tendency to get lost on site) and the reflected colour on the stones.

Included in the group exhibition, Traces of Prehistory (Artikinesis).

Devil's Den

oil on linen canvas, 46 x 38 cm

£160 - SOLD

Porth Moina

Porth Moina, oil on canvas, 100 x 73 cm

Porth Moina is in Penwith, Cornwall, on the north coast (and on the southwest coast path) . Porth means "cove" and Moina probably means "mines" in this context.

Bluebell Stump (Wolverton Blue 2) - SOLD

Wednesday's short painting session in Wolverton Wood gave me enough material (on the canvas and in my head) to refine the image in the studio yesterday.

Bluebell Stump (Wolverton Blue 2)

Oil on natural linen canvas, 30 x 40 cm

£120 SOLD

Dancing Trees

Dancing Trees, oil on linen canvas, 33 x 41 cm

Another one from late last year. This is based on photographs taken two Januaries ago in Hamstead Park near Newbury, Berkshire.

Gold and Grey - SOLD

Yesterday's in-studio painting, a local landscape. The trees on the ridge may be familiar if you recall Ridge or any of the Skyline paintings.

Oil on canvas, 100 x 65 cm
SOLD

Ridge - SOLD

I am very fond of these trees, which sit upon a ridge close to my home and are visible from many local footpaths. I've painted them before (using the title "Skyline"), and no doubt will again.

Ridge
Oil on canvas, 33 x 41 cm

SOLD

Across the Beach

This is a composite of several photographs taken on Portreath beach in December 2012, and painted largely during the last day or two of my Hampshire Open Studio run this year. I mentally enhanced the colours between photographic reference and painted picture, and deliberately left a few areas of natural-coloured linen canvas unpainted.

Across the Beach, oil on canvas, 100 x 65 cm

£575
exclusive of post and packaging

Spectrum

Spectrum, oil on canvas, 30 x 90 cm

This is another painting made during my Open Studio hours. I revisited an image that I have used before, a photograph taken in Micheldever Woods. The older painting is shown below.

Micheldever, oil on canvas, 20 x 50 cm, SOLD
[October 2013]

Obviously, the new painting is larger, but it also seems to be a lot brighter. I don't think that it is merely a difference in lighting when taking the photograph; I do seem to be gravitating towards brighter colours lately.

I have two more days of being 'Open' before the scheme finishes on Monday 25 May. 

Backlight (poppy)

This is based on one of my many source photographs of poppies. I had thought that I might not use this image, but it struck me yesterday that the way the sun shone through the petals was rather starkly primary - almost primal. I did most of the colour-mixing, such as it is, on the canvas, which is naturally coloured linen.

Backlight
Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 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

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.

Wiltshire Blue

Coming down off the ridgeway in Wiltshire in June, this caught my eye - I don't know what the crop was, but it was decidedly bluer than anything else growing in the fields. The receding stripes echoed the clouds in the upper part of the sky agreeably and I knew it would make a good painting.

This is rather a quick painting, so there could well be a better one to be made.

Anyway, I took a photograph back in June and used my ancient iMac to display it today, thus circumventing the printer (which needs ink).

Blue Stripey Field
Oil on linen canvas, 30 x 30 cm

Gold and Silver Birch (Snelsmore Common)

Snelsmore Common is a little oasis of nature between Newbury and the M4. It has fascinating wildlife and geology - and its silver birch seem to have turned orange. I wondered if it was some sort of lichen, but it's too fine for that. Tristam Belstaff, from Reading (around 20 miles from Snelsmore) suggests on his blog that it is an alga called Trentepohlia sp. I'm happy to go with that, even if he was talking about a tree in Reading.

Marazion Breaker

These waves are based on photographs taken at Marazion, Cornwall, in December 2013.

November Trees

There are a lot of heavily wooded areas near where I work. One sunny lunch hour last November, I took my camera for a walk in the woods; this is based on the photographs I took that day.

It's painted on another clear-gessoed linen canvas; the natural linen peeps through here and there, and the edges are deliberately unfinished.

Oil on canvas, 30 x 30 cm
For sale