“Calm Coast”

We have an area of extensive mudflats only a couple of miles away from our village: Hen reedbeds on the River Blyth, less than a mile from where it joins with the North sea at Southwold Harbour. In the autumn it’s one of the best sites for Starling murmurations, and is also a great place to see Bearded tits. For me, it’s a place of calm, with vast unfolding layers of light interlaced with low headlands of saltmarsh. Plaintive Curlew, Lapwing and startled notes of Oyster Catchers complete this beautifully solitary and melancholic stage.

“Not a Breath”

Hazlewood marsh on the River Alde near the coast at Aldeburgh, is a wonderful example of human beings applying common sense after a destructive event. In December 2013 the sea broke through the wall protecting this freshwater marsh. Rather than expensively repair the breach, it was decided to let nature take its course.
I painted there some years later, by which time much of the tree and scrub populations had died. As the marsh website says, the saltwater marsh now provides a perfect habitat for many species: “Majestic spoonbill can now be seen on the reserve during the winter, along with huge flocks of black-tailed godwits and Dunlin. Redshank, lapwing and Avocet all nest here and the briny waters ring with many species of duck calls.”
The title of my piece reflects the stillness and quiet of the place on one of our hot summer days when nothing stirred.

“Iken Reedbeds”

The Suffolk coastal area has extensive areas of saltmarsh and reedbeds, which are not only beautiful, but support wildlife species like otter, Bittern, Godwit, Marsh Harrier to name but a very few. They also play a vital role in dissipating storm surge damage by offering natural defences which trigger wave decay more rapidly. Iken village near Snape, famous as the site developed by Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, is one such site. This painting celebrates its beauty and deep complex constructive power in a natural environment up against human-made damage.

Postcard sized, this watercolour sold locally. Slightly more obvious than the other three choices, the composition employs the textured surface of the paper I chose, in order to assist create the sandy, early autumn feel of our village woodland. Bracken is orange and brown and piled up across the Sandling (heathland). I’ve also used sgraffito (scratching) to add a feel of the scruffy tangle we get as plants ‘go over

SOLD

This small watercolour was a delight to paint. It was a response to the Lilac blossom as it came into its fullest bloom and began tipping over. In response to this month’s quote on the Watercolour page, the ‘possibilities’ of the watercolour medium are astonishing. Since I first began using watercolour pigments in 2012, I wanted to see how it would perform when used in an abstract composition. I still love the forms and colours it can produce when translucent pigments are layered onto quality paper, and set free. Watching where they run to when I move the paper around, and where the drying edges form is exciting.

SOLD

One of my earliest watercolours, this painting on cartridge paper was an experiment in mixing greys from a range of other pigments. I remember how exciting it felt to realise that adding a drop more blue, or brown for instance, results in a new shade of grey. The subject here is a Norfolk Horn ewe painted shortly after being shorn. Her beautiful, delicate legs were a joy to watch careering across the farmer’s organic, herb-rich meadow’. I may never part with this painting, loving it so much. Maybe it speaks of a love of delicacy and gentleness.

A small ink and watercolour from the same period as the sheep. The gamer also kept Tamworth pigs whose chunky piglets are a gorgeous ginger biscuit brown. This field would be thoroughly wrecked (or usefully ploughed) after the sows had raised their families over several months. I remember enjoying letting the lines and marks ‘play’ in a way which for me expressed something of the disturbed field surface. It may be another piece that I find hard to let go of.
In this case I am thinking that the work suggests a love and valuing of chaos and unconcerned digging around.

A large sheet of Two Rivers watercolour paper was needed for this large painting. Only their beautifully sized, strong hand made paper can cope with the amount of water based pigments I used to build up layers on this saltmarsh inspired piece. I chose to mix a particular brown into the grey wash in some areas, knowing that one of its properties is to granulate. The ‘dotted’ areas illustrate that effect. It’s exciting to wait for the granulation to swirl and finally settle.
For me this piece speaks of strength and harshness; survival against the odds perhaps.’

Currently selected for and showing in the Sir John Hurt Prize exhibition in Holt (2023)

Several shades of grey” has been successful in being chosen for the prestigious prize competition. It’s a large watercolour demonstrating the complexity I can achieve layering translucent watercolour glazes. Its a process of risking laying down one or two areas of colour onto the white, then waiting, and when dry, more waiting for a decision to form about what colour and shape to put where, next! I obviously made a good job of this. It’s one of the top quality works I produced in the 10 years I spent exploring how to move watercolour (rather than the popular acrylic water based paint), into abstraction. It’s still a very exciting process.
Harder to perceive inner meanings in this one.Willingness to persevere in complex situations perhaps?

Listening to Sibelius

This 20cm acrylic ink on board is a response to my love of the music of Sibelius. I enjoy the darkness and power of his music, its tender lyricism and sense of melancholy. The piece is one of a set of 10 paintings, some on paper. Please use the Contact form to enquire further.

Searching for balance

Acrylic inks and paint on a 50cm cradled board. Although at one level, this painting responds to the English rural landscape, through the acid yellow that April brings, there is a lot more going on. I love arranging shapes, built up by layering paint or ink. I never have a plan at the start, but simply make decisions as I go, based on what feels right to me. I love the power of this composition. It is clear about itself: clear edges, clear relationship between different shapes. But it also offers a fascinating invitation to take part in its search for balance.

Come close or move away?

Family Therapy

‘Hurry Up Les!’

The most recent fun collage with a wild swimming theme. (30cm)
I love the story-telling aspect of these. Les has turned up a bit late and Andrew who is often the first to arrive, is on his way to the Pier. The others are tackling the shifting shingle and breaking waves to get in safely. Apologies to the beach hut owners whose decor is much more pristine than I wanted to achieve!

Do visit the show to see the full range of work in watercolour, oils and collage.

‘Maybe Not!!’

If you read the August ‘from the Studio’ post you will discover that a collage I made to raise funds for the lifeboat crew at Southwold RNLI, proved a great success and raised £400. I so enjoyed making it that I decided I would continue this fun series. Maybe not is another 20cm piece showing 2 swimmers deciding against going into a fairly tumultuous sea. It’s a regular choice we Sole Bay Swimmers have to make. The North Sea can be a mighty beast.

‘Devastated’

‘Devastated’ is a small relative of ‘Blackshore will rise’. The gallery hosting my solo show is small, so I have made some miniature collages. Like the big work, this 20cm work speaks of the shock and damage of the fire.

One of my biggest collages, (80cm wide), this piece has dark notes in it, picking up on the destruction to businesses at Southwold Harbour as a result of a fire in May this year. It’s interesting to note that making the piece involved building, taking apart and rebuilding. That was just the result of the challenges involved in composition. You can read more detail of the process on the August post on ‘From the studio’. I am pleased with its mood and hope it ’speaks’ to you.

A 60cm square collage on cradled board, this sold in 2021. I wanted to share it though because it expresses another delight: sunshine and sea. I swim at Southwold all year round now: a new-ish and proud achievement made possible by a brilliant bunch of people who do the same. “Sole Bay Swimmers”. Painted tissue plays its lovely part here. You can see the serendipitous patterns which form when multiple layers of tissue pick up acrylic ink which I apply only to the top piece of tissue. The ink penetrates through the other sheets, and as they are separated, maybe scrunched up or attacked with rollers and other tools, these patterns form. Outside my control mainly, so a lot of fun when I find a section I can incorporate into the composition.

Another sold collage. This one definitely comes out of my musicality. I have sung all my life and played various instruments, and it feels like the absolute core of me. So grateful for it. Just think of me dancing around here. I did not have any subject in mind when I made it.

This collage is rustic and its surface very 3 dimensional. (30x30cm on cradled board and available: Ok to post). It expresses one of my gut feelings about “Blackshore”(Southwold Harbour), but in this case it is not the wonderful black huts which but and tumble against each other along the shore, but the gorgeous rusty hut-roofs, and worn surfaces of boat hulls with inspire. I would also say that the sea is here: a response to its power and capacity for destruction. In my body I am aware both of the danger and the fun.

Collage greeting card – sold

For the July selection, I’m introducing you to the collages which helped my move out of a very stuck place I ended up in during the 2020 lockdowns. Over that Christmas period, having had both shoulder problems and a sense of complete uncertainty about what I really wanted to do, I found myself tucked away in a tiny ‘office’ space under the stairs, working onto small cards with cut up pieces of discarded watercolours. It was very soothing, and I became very pleased with the results.
This example feels springlike to me.
These tiny original works in collage are for sale as miniature pieces, and can easily be posted.

Collage greeting card – sold

Collage greeting card – sold

These small original collages a great to ‘play’ with: what do you see this as, and see within it

Collage greeting card – sold

Great fun this one… almost a narrative going on?
Its probably clear that these don’t stay on the shelf that long!

“Storm on Harbour Road” came into being out of my frequent walks along Blackshore, Southwold Harbour. I love this place in all weathers. In stormy weather it is made brilliantly noisy with the winds whipping the rigging, making a band of clattering percussion and the whining of taut, straining steel. Calm or storm set, the place has a creative, straightforward workmanlike energy. Orderliness has no place. The composition is truly cacophonous in its piles of fishing industry tackle, black huts and rusty roofs, not to say boats of every size and hue. I identify with it and always enjoy being there. 30cm collage on board.

“Incoming tide”. Saltmarshes are another favourite walking habitat. I always feel that there is something raw about these watery boundaries between sea and land. As a Botany and Zoology graduate I’m aware of their importance in the management of tidal surges and rising sea levels. Along the Suffolk coast, much has been done to rebuild them for these purposes. I hope the textures and colours of this large collage on board echo the nature of these important places. Approx 90 x 70cm

Collage is such a fun medium to work in.
I hope you have enjoyed reading something of the journeys these 4 works made.

A 20cm oil on canvas, this abstract painting expresses the beauty of our Suffolk coast. Benacre broad is a tiny freshwater ‘broad’ (as in the Norfolk Broads). It is separated from the North Sea by a narrow strip of beach. Here, in this study I chose to use warm, sunny colours to reflect how dazzlingly gorgeous this coast can be in fine weather, where the sea is shimmering, and the soft (and therefore vulnerable) sandy coastline stores the sun’s heat.

‘Heat Haze’

A 40cm oil on canvas, this painting’s smooth surface shimmers with light. Shapes that suggest coastal forms hover as happens when the light is intensely bright looking out over a sunny calm sea at the height of summer.

‘Iken Reedbeds’

An oil on board take on the chaos and sense of life brimming and teeming in the reedbeds at Iken on the Suffolk coast. Painted after a wildly windy day, with the reeds flattened every which way. I love the intense colours of this painting. To me they speak of the vitality of our natural environment, which deserves every effort we can make to support its continuing survival.

I had to call this large oil ’Snow ewes’. Available to buy.
A 76x76cm canvas it was painted at a time that I was enjoying applying paint with my fingers. (Possibly a little risky toxicity-wise?)
I love sheep.
It’s their roundness and woolliness. I imagine them to be sturdy and even though they look chunky rather than graceful, when they run, they run fast on what seem almost insubstantial legs. It’s all a great collection of paradoxes. They also stay close, and although supposed to be dim, I doubt that.
These paintings are all painted with palette knives, using first only white oil paint. The knives create a surface texture. Rubbing other colour pigments over the dried white surface gradually reveals this texture. A lot of fun.

Another 76cm canvas, and oil and called “Attitewed’. Its is available to buy. Painted in the same way as the other 3 oils on this page, these girls present a whole family of characters. Front: bossy, in charge? Close behind: curious? Maybe a useful negotiator? 3rd back: watching to see what develops? Could go either way. At the rear: considering sidling off?

I used topping hares on a regular basis. I love the fluidity of their movement, and these fascinating boxing routines. Another textured palette knife painted canvas, still available and 50cm square.

An oil on 60cm canvas which sold quickly. These 2 are in cahoots and the third is trying to move in on the action.

These colours may resonate differently in our brain.

A 50cm square oil on canvas with an intriguing area of scarlet. Surface scratches (sgraffito if you’d like the Italian term) create interest. I’ll go as far as to say that a field of Barley in spring had inspired me. And it has been titled “Suddenly there were poppies”.

How do our brains respond to the flowing shapes and rich bright colours?

In relation to Klee’s statement, it is interesting to reflect on how these colours and forms are stimulating our brain…

“Black tar and rust” This large oil on board sold recently I’m delighted to say. It’s an abstract take on my local Suffolk coast harbour at Southwold. Most people love its black huts and their rusty roofs. Georgia O Keefe is quoted as saying;”I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way…” This composition of dark, of blue and of random lines and shapes that criss cross Blackshore expresses my pleasure in that place.

“Black tar and rust” This large oil on board sold recently I’m delighted to say. It’s an abstract take on my local Suffolk coast harbour at Southwold. Most people love its black huts and their rusty roofs. Georgia O Keefe is quoted as saying;”I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way…” This composition of dark, of blue and of random lines and shapes that criss cross Blackshore expresses my pleasure in that place.

Again, I think also music is involved.

The place feels very old and walking is as if we are metres below ground level… and why would that be? Could it be an ancient track? To give details risks dictating to the viewer. How this piece stimulates the brain is best left to each individual to discern.

From my perspective, although at the time of painting (as is often the case for me), I was unaware of what, in me, might be shaping the work, I now detect the importance that music has in my life.

I hope it provides an opportunity to tune into the forms and forces in their fullest showcasing.