A moorland farm which hosts visitors all year round has prints of some of my moorland paintings on the walls of their holiday cottages. The cottages, adapted from old stone outbuildings, have a stunning vista looking east, across the Lynher and Inny valleys and on to...
I have painted four new canvases of the Outer Hebrides - of crofts and old farms, and of the livestock in meadows filled with mid-summer flowers. They are landscapes of North Uist and South Uist whose western coasts are the low, flat machair, the fertile width of land...
Art historians view Vincent van Gogh as a man with a tormented personality. Throughout his life he was something of a misfit. Early on he seemed determined to make his mark on the social scene around him, but there was something about his persona that made people...
I have sometimes heard people say, “Oh, you paint in Cornwall. They do say there’s a wonderful clarity of light down there.” I have often been puzzled by what they mean by ‘clarity of the light’. The most obvious fact is that the air down here is usually ...
In tidying a corner of my studio in January, with the rain coming down and the sky almost incessantly grey, as it sometimes is in Cornish winter, I found a folder with a pastel sketch that delighted me and was something of an antidote to the weather outside. It was of...
Over the months I have been sharing thoughts on my painting methods. Brushes are of central importance, and in this blog piece I go into detail about which I use, and the effects they create in my work. I use ordinary paint brushes, of the sort you buy for...
As a boy growing up it was never actually in my mind to become an artist. Rather, it was something to which I was subconsciously drawn, stage by stage, as I moved through life, until at 30 years old I finally made the leap of faith to become a full-time artist, being...
I am often asked, “Do you ever feel you are running out of inspiration?” The simple answer is, “No”. I love painting - it’s more a question of which ideas I follow up. I have a deep love of landscape in all its moods so ideas for paintings come into my head all the...
When I sat down to begin my thoughts on how I approach composition in my paintings it provoked a series of questions about why I choose to paint particular subjects and what then guides the way I lay out a landscape. You may have heard about ‘the golden mean’ and the...
As a landscape artist I have spent countless hours experimenting with different brushes and techniques to paint the landscapes I am known for. I can’t over-stress the importance of choosing the right brushes for each stage of the painting process. From laying down the...