ABOUT / PAINTINGS / INFORMATION

Ever since leaving the Royal College of Art my work has been concerned with colour. The influences on my approach are obvious and include early Matisse and Scottish painting. I try to balance what I observe with an intense expression of light and colour. The difficulty is in maintaining this sensitivity to the real facts before me whilst liberating the colour in a poetic or creative way. This interplay of drawing and painterliness is the essence of my work. The development of the colour is a complex but instinctive process which requires constant adjustment and re working. I often find that the success of a painting is down to just a few small touches of colour right at the end of the period of work. No colour is of itself colourful. It depends always on its relationship with ALL the other colours on the canvas. Given the right juxtaposition even a grey can intensify the effects of strong colour. I am also very concerned with paint quality.

For me a painted mark has to have a certain spontaneous feel. I work fairly quickly so that I am having to take some risks with the paint. The best bits in most paintings are where the artists have lost themselves in the process and the image feels that it occurred almost without effort. You see this kind of thing in late Rembrandt and of course in Cezanne, perhaps the greatest of all colourists. So sometimes accuracy to the bare facts has to be abandoned in favour of the right mark or the right colour in hopefully the right place. In the end I want you to experience the world in my paintings but in a refreshed way. I hope by means of light and colour, I help you enjoy the visual world as a new experience and maybe make you look at it again in a new way.