Figures and Landscape

I have always drawn and painted what’s around me. Like many English painters I'd like to think I have an affinity for landscape, above all familiar landscapes I know intimately and which might even seem ordinary. After long periods painting in the South of France and Scotland, I have come to love the the unexpectedness of urban landscapes in the city where I’ve lived for most of my life, London. 

The greatest challenge for the artist is, and always has been, to represent the human form. Life Drawing lies at the heart of my work and I paint and draw two or three times a week with fellow artists and a shared model. Every session is different and presents new challenges: paintings or drawings unfold over time as the pose responds to the effect of gravity and shifting light, and is never static. Accuracy matters in understanding the proportions and structure of the human body. Often it's necessary to ignore appearance and surfaces which usually mask, rather than reveal the underlying character of the subject. For me the hardest decision is knowing when to leave off and how to keep a painting open and fluid during the continual process of correction and adjustment. 

My work is rooted in drawing and looking hard at the world around me. Relentless scrutiny of the figure, or landscape can reveal the strangeness of familiar things and places. My paintings evolve through the process of drawing and are an attempt to capture the experience of physical reality by reconstructing it in paint. To create tension between abstract shapes and three dimensional form is my goal, and, of course, to produce beautiful surfaces.