Some years ago, as a result of a commission, I travelled along the Great Glen, that deep geological scar which traverses Scotland from west to east. Beginning with the sea loch in the west past the Grampian mountains, and following the Caledonian Canal which links a...
I live on the high ground of the East Moor among the tors, with the rivers Lynher and Fowey to east and west, each only a few minutes away by car. The Withy Brook, a founding tributary of the Lynher is just a ten minutes walk from home to an ancient tin stream that...
A portrait of a dog I rarely look to paint specific animals or people - that is a portrait aiming to depict a strong likeness to a particular subject. I’m much more interested in animating a particular scenario, be it a landscape or an interior where there’s a...
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...