As well as what I do myself I love to encourage others to enjoy art and often say that school and peer pressure are as good at putting people off art as they are with mathematics. I once sat at my adult daughter’s birthday party and entertained the kids by showing them how to draw on my tablet computer. I put the results up on Facebook/Meta and, as I no longer use that, I have created a page called The Fridge Door to display them. Though some of them are now young adults, I still encourage contributions.
I carry sketchbooks with me most of the time and encourage others, even while they watch me paint outside.
The paintings are a mixed bag, with some themes. Some are are just places and weather, I often then develop other works from the sketches, photographs and memories. I like to include animals (including people) and to give a sense of movement. I tell people that I want to capture what we see and remember. While often stunning, photographs capture only one set of light conditions (which often does not reflect what we are actually seeing) and one focus length. We can scan a scene and pick up all sorts of highlights near and far and include them in an appreciated image. When you start including emotions, history and expectations a very rich picture develops. I’ll never capture that but I can try to get closer.
I try to include a sense of movement and include creatures (including us). I try to reflect the place and situation in the style, rather than enforce a style on the subject. My recent experiments with palette knives has widened my repertoire again and allowed me to revisit subjects that I had been less than happy with previously. The Digley Airshow at the top was one such as were the following two.
In a long life of making and studying art works of all kinds, I’ve always been keen not to trap myself in what other people think is good. I try to find ways of entertaining people and perhaps to widen their views a little as I do it
Some are what Ruth calls social realism, that are made up from memories and bits of photos to evoke events, people, a time, even place. Others represent what is evoked by a book, as in the Gandalf paintings that I started doing for people, on their student room windows, in the early 1970’s.
In later years I have sketched more regularly such as those below of the Peebles area from the Peebles Hydro, when I couldn’t move easily and the weather was very doubtful.
Some are to get people to think about things that might otherwise be ignored, such as the trees in big houses and gardens, or an abandoned canal and bridge. There are examples here of sketches, acrylic works, e-pictures, murals and combinations of those. All images are free for you to use. As with all my work, I have sold them only to make money for charity. If you want an image, make a donation to the charity of your choice.
During 2020 I made a work that was a collage of mini versions of parts of the view from our bedroom during Lockdown. I then did some others of the same view based on the Lockdown experience, reflected in the view.
I often work best when someone says something like ‘I like washing on the line’ and I commemorate that. Some of the photos are not very good because they are old and I don’t have access to the paintings to redo them.
Click on an image for more information and related work.
My latest attempts will appear as posts below, as well as in the categories to which they belong.
