Buoys In The Bay

I’ve drawn and painted all my life- before I could read or write. Both self-therapy and self-expression and as an only child, a pastime that was a friend and companion to while away the hours without siblings or friends when I moved to a new country.

 

My first chosen painting mediums were watercolours due to its immediacy and quickness, in a time poor world, when later pursuing a career in hospital medicine.

 

In recent years I’ve progressed to oils, and this is the medium I most love, for its utter malleability of form, the feeling of working with this creating a pared down chalkiness to richness and oiliness. I try to approach each painting afresh and I’m not moulded into one approach or one style. I try to stay optimistic about the outcome and I aim for a fairly loose style.

 

I aim for a simple composition from what originally can be a complex vista with many focal points. So, I’ll spend a long time observing, re-visiting a place just watching and looking. This instinctive and under-estimated past time is a real pleasure for me. I’ll often plan in my mind, first a sketch on paper, a simple structure. I’ll create the painting in my mind first, imagining the different parts, deciding on the layout and perspective, and mixing the palette in my head. When I have a fairly good idea of that, I’ll begin to sketch it in on the canvas with thinned out burnt umber. Whilst some paintings seem organic – for me they rarely are- they are an interpretation of a place and often many photos of I’ve take of that place. Ill sketch or paint “en plein” or come back to photos I’ve taken of a place. Ill try to imagine what I’m aiming for and …. sometimes I succeed.

 

I start with the sky- this dictates the mood. Half the canvas is often sky – I love drama in the sky, I become very excited with this part of the start of the painting- it sets the mood. I try to create movement and contrasting light with a sky coming “overhead”. For me the sky is the inner “drama-queen”.

 

Whilst I try to keep a simple composition and have planned the most vital elements of it- the water, rock, trees, or foliage – they are often created over time with many layers of paint and many tones, varying texture, and colour. Tone, rich colour, light are all important to me - I want the painting to “feel alive “, filled with tonal light and movement – or stillness- when its needed. Currently, I’m enjoying creating paintings with dual light tones- a “yin and yang” in one piece. This is inspired from where I now live in Devon, high on a hill with wide vistas taking in a large swathe of panoramic landscape.

 

Oil on Box Canvas

61x61cm

Unframed