Landmarks

"Also notable are [Amanda Bates'] trio of small works, hung as a vertical panel: Thatcham's Bluecoat School, Donnigton Caste and Newbury Corn Exchange. The subjects are tightly cropped within the frame, with little context, giving them a palpable presence."
Newbury Weeky News: Lin Wilkinson

Three wooden panels, each 15  x 15 cm, painted over clear gesso so that the wood peeps through the thick oil paint. These three pictures were painted for, and are currently on display as part of, the Artikinesis Springtime exhibition at the West Berkshire Museum, The Wharf, Newbury - but only until Sunday 23 April.

The exhibition also features work by Rosemary Lawrey, Elinor Cooper, Adeliza Mole and Brian R. Marchant.

Thatcham Bluecoats / Newbury Corn Exchange / Donnington Castle

Oil on wooden panel

£50 each

T

Market Day (Basingtoke)

"Market Day", acrylic on canvas board, 40 x 40 cm

This is one of the paintings from late last year that I never quite managed to get a decent photograph of. The light was good today and I had my camera in the studio, so I did a bit of catching up.

The subject here is Basingstoke's bustling market at the "Top of Town" - the older bit of the town centre, a little uphill from the roofed-in modern shopping precincts. The large white building was once the town hall and is now the Willis Museum (run by the Hampshire Cultural Trust for the town).

This image was based on one of my pages from the Artikinesis colouring book, and painted for the upcoming North Hampshire Art exhibition, to be held at the Willis Museum in May.

Artikinesis and the Basingstoke Project

"Labyrinth of Commerce", acrylic on canvas, 50 x 70 cm

Artikinesis is a new artist's collective. Our new collective.

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

Thatcham English Barn

This barn - a grade 2 listed building - is right in the centre of the town of Thatcham. It's still there, but now there is hoarding around it and a residential home behind it; this is from a black and white photograph that I took around 10 years ago.

Acrylic on canvas, 5 x 7"

Thatcham Bluecoats School, A4 side

When I lived in Thatcham, I grew rather fond of the old Bluecoats school building. Back then, it had a sign proclaiming "Antique Pine" (although it never seemed to be open) and all views of it were partially obscured by street furniture - roadsigns, pedestrian crossing controls, barriers...

Porthleven from the Beach

I wasn't expecting to get the opportunity to paint yesterday, but I did. So I did.

This is based on a selection of photographs taken at Easter in 2010, when it was gloriously warm and sunny. They weren't intended to be a panoramic view (they just happened to join up), and I did remove a number of people, including, um, some in  the foreground. I didn't include quite all of the seaweed, either.

The church on the seafront is, I think, quite distinctive; it certainly says "Porthleven" to me.

Oil on canvas, 55 x 33 cm
25 December 2012
SOLD