Two paintings featured in “Oil Painting Workshop” written by Aggy Boshoff and published
by Dorling Kindersley - used to illustrate techniques of aerial perspectve and texture,
see:-
After a career in music - playing drums and keyboards, writing, recording and touring
I returned to painting over 20 years ago. I studied with the great teacher Laurie
Rabson - who was a great influence. Most of my paintings are in oil on canvas; I
use watercolour for sketching and preparatory work. I exhibit widely in the South
East and my work hangs in private collections worldwide.
The vocabulary we use in music and painting is remarkably similiar - colour, tone,
harmony, composition - it is all about creativity and communication. Just as in my
music my paintings are concerned with pattern and contrast, colour and light, the
rhythms that work together in a representation of the natural world - but also the
abstract expression of ideas and a traditional exploration of the possibilities of
portraying three dimensions in two.
By the combination of techniques of landscape painting with the
exploration of subjective memories and dreams I am seeking to
communicate the nature of my reality. All painting is abstract and even
plein air landscape is the painting of imagination, not reality. The
starting point could be a small tableau assembled in the studio - a
miniature landscape of model figures, plants, shells and found objects.
The motivation could be a dream or a memory - a memory strong
enough to demand to be studied, interpreted and painted.
This large triptych form landscape - “Sunlight Through Trees” - was commissioned
by a private client for a house in London. It is painted in oils on three canvas
panels and was specially created to hang on a central landing. Examples of other
commissioned work available on request.
Commissions
Recent work includes a series of paintings - “Scenes From Dreams” - images like stills
from a movie. Real becomes surreal, mystical or mischievous. Memories as extravagant
dreams, dreams as exaggerated memories. On this website there are also landscapes
in a broadly impressionist style - many painted exclusively with the palette knife
using impasto. Other work is a hybrid of still life and landscape - pictures which
are painted from small tableau assembled in the studio - model figures, plants, shells,
found objects, and maybe one of my earlier landscapes referenced in the background.
They are exercises in composition and colour - miniature landscapes that can be ordered
and re-arranged at will - but in response to an urge to capture a memory or a dream
of a time and a place that maybe never existed or is yet to come.
