Weekly meditations on the human figure.

Informed by David Bombergs concept of “The spirit in the mass”

Considering the subject as more than an exercise in plotting positions and angles

Allowing that which activates the body to be expressed.

Most drawings are A2 size in Pastel or Charcoal

A weekly study of human likenesses.

As with life drawing, David Bombergs “Spirit in the Mass” informs my approach.

Most drawings are A2 size, in pastel or Charcoal on paper

When painting landscapes, I aim to create an expression that contains some physical likeness, while capturing the poetry of the interaction between land and sky, and between the inner and outer worlds.

My landscape paintings are, of course, formed by gathering visual information outdoors, but they also require a conceptual framework.

The insights of mediævalist Alfred Siewers on landscape have been most valuable to me. He sees landscape as “… the physical environment that mediates between the human mind and nature”.

I think it no surprise that such thoughts stem from a study of the mediæval period, where active engagement with the physical world was infused with a spiritual and intellectual dimension, with body and mind unified.

Seeing a world of such richness, woven from so many threads, fills the land with meaning and significance for me.

A4 charcoal and Pastel drawings from Museum visits to :

The Ashmolean

Oxford Natural History Museum

"Cosimo would stand under the pavilion of leaves, watching the sun appear through the network of twigs and branches, the gradual swell of the green fruit, smelling the scent of flowers budding in the stalks."

From "The Baron in the Trees" by Italo Calvino

The experience of being amongst trees, watching the ebb and flow. This I aim to express.

Oils, Watercolours and pastels.

“And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul?”

The great American poet Walt Whitman, in his work “I sing the Body Electric”, merges dynamism, sensuality and physicality with the spiritual to form the potent 'Body Electric'.

I set about making studies of the body through this perspective, of the body as vibrating with life. I create a variety of responses, some more formal than others, continually developing a means of expression.

Whitman believed that a poet's style should be simple and natural. My desire is also to be without contrivance, and to hone skill and sensitivity through the body.

Interior Landscapes

"wer nicht hören will, muss fühlen”

This German proverb is intended to serve as a warning:

'He who will not listen must feel”

I am struck by the idea that sometimes the warned against ‘feeling’ can be a better way to learn.

In the silent world of paint on panels, feelings must come in to play.

My paintings utilise richness of paint application and colour along with tonal relationships.

I observe my subjects both visually and for the unseen qualities they posses, the cool curving touch of ceramics, the fresh green fragrance of a wild flower to create 'Interior Landscapes'

Landscape which reflects upon the beautiful and mysterious insights of 20th Century physics. The measured certitude of Renaissance thought makes way for the "uncertainty of the observable"

Delineations become softened, sky and land merge, animated by unseen forces.