“This is the third in the “Pies series” after “Before the Rush” and “That Moment of Indecision” which have both sold on Artfinder.
Here our everyman protagonist is joined by the fleeting, shooting looks of a passer-by, also briefly considering whether to to step into the warmth of the “Pies” shop on St Mary’s Street, Cardiff.
At least the passer-by’s brisk walk, and disgusted frown at even having entertained the notion of pies, suggest the exquisite relish and torturous desire will be shorter lived than the gentleman by the window, who has moved his longing gaze from the advertising board to the orange-inviting heat of indoors.”
new oil painting – 80 x 60 cm, £479 – “Night Jacks”
“The title of this expressionist “urban folk” painting takes it’s title from Hopper’s “Night Hawks” – I have “Britished” Hopper’s painting which was set in an American diner by using a British alternative or even equivalent the ever present Fish and Chip shop instead as it seemed appropriate. The second part of the title, Jacks, refers to a name we have here in Swansea for people who come form Swansea.”
“This is another form the Ilston Cwn series of expressionist, “refractionist” paintings. This bridge has featured before in the best selling “Bridge series” from 2014.
This time I have painted the bridge from a different perspective rather than “head on” so to speak. I just loved the rainbow of colours reflected in the water and the grassing and variously textured river bank.
There was such a spectrum of colour in this scene with the winter sun illuminating a tapestry of colour from the foreground to the back.
Again it is almost surprising that winter yields the clearest, illuminating light and the greatest palette of nature’s colours.”
A return to the Black Mountains of Mid Wales for inspiration and an oil painting of a mountain top, wreathed in red-mauve heather and yellow gorse. This contrasts with the descending fields of “Welsh green”.
This “refractionist”, expressionist oil painting is of Cannisland Woods in Gower Peninsula, heading towards Parkmill. It is Spring and the bright clear light penetrates deep into the Ivy-wrapped pinewood to illuminate a kaleidoscope of colours barely visible from outside the wood. This is the joy of these woods; how they become draped in such beautiful colours when the light gets breaks through. What looks, at first, dark and dank, is transformed into a joyous medley of colour in seconds.
A new oil painting “The Shadows We Cast” this oil painting is inspired by watching three people waiting, on a brilliant sunny day, on the High Street for their loved ones inside the shop.
“Although the old man who was waiting for his wife and daughter, he is not with the man who is protectively looking on as his son plays with the shadow cast on the pavement. They both wait for their wife and mum.
However, they all seemed connected, and this is heightened by them by being male and in the act of waiting.
I was going to call the painting “The Three Ages…” (of man) as we can see Bampi (grandfather), father and son but then thought the “Shadows We Cast” more lyrical as it not only describes literally the shadows cast, by the sun on the hard street and equally by the old man and boy, both “playing” in the contrasting darkness as they wait, which is in contrast to Dad’s watchful eye but also lyrically the protective loving effect others have on other lives and they have on other’s lives.
The casting shadows are their consideration of others and their consideration of them.
The old man is connected to the the two others in that he is waiting for the legacy he has in this wife and daughter and the man look on at his legacy in his son, a sense of now and the future in his facial expression, a wondering of the shadow he is casting in his son.
The father is a great juxtaposition here as he is seriously intent and firmly in the present reality of the moment whereas the son is in a fantastical revere of play and the oldman deep in the imaginary of a fondly remembered past.
The past can also cast a shadow on this sunny moment just as the child’s playful musing?
Only the father is resolutely here in the sunny present, perhaps allowing the other two their play?
Perhaps that is the shadow we cast, the protection that allows others to be happy and secure in their play, in themselves?”
This is the last of the summer wine of a substantial series of oil paintings of a woodland area in Gower Pensinsula between Ilston and Parkmill, which the locals call Cannisland Woods.
It is amazingly beautiful at any time of the year but the light is rarely better than in Winter when it is glassy clear and this helps create a riot of colours and hues in this most dank time, in the mulched leave-layered ground, in the trickling everchanging brook of the Killy Willy, in the distant haze behind the barren trees and in the wonderfully green-mossy trees and shiney, slippery brown barks of the twisted trees by the Killy Willy.
This is another “refractionist” (expressionist) style painting which is similar to Sapling Wood and Rainbow Wood in it’s sweeping streaks of colour but much more grand in it’s ambition and luxuriant in its detail. This will probably be the last of this series of paintings for some time so enjoy.
The painting has sold but you can buy a large limited edition mounted print here
This is an oil painting of the Table Mountain in Mid Wales. I painted this because I loved the colours of blues, turquoise and purple which blend pleasingly with the blue-greens and terracottas of the trees and land.
Nature unearths such lovely rich colours and casts them wide in lovely complementary chromatic patchworks.
I would say this painting is inspired like so many of my mid-Wales landscapes by one of my favourite painters, Robert Bevan, whose landscapes have influenced how I paint this type of hilly upland landscape as opposed to the landscape I paint of Gower Peninsula which is usually in my own unique refractionist style which in itself influenced by expressionism.
I love the idea that colour expresses emotion, transports and alleviates the self and a creates an emotional response to a place depicted in a painting. Ideally I like to transport the viewer to the place so that the viewer somehow feels they are there or have been there in some sense. That is somehow familiar to them. In this painting I hoped to transport one to soft lazy warmnesss of summer in the fields of Mid Wales. The velvety feel of the Table Mountain helps heighten this feeling of softness. The warm summer breeze can often give this sense of snoozy softness and I hope some of this is conveyed in this painting with the manicure trees like hairdryed Bouffants and the dusty dryness of the terracotta.
As this oil painting depicts the end of March and the coming of spring, one of my artloving friends sent me a section of a poem by William Wordsworth which he felt my paintings of this area of Gower expressed to him.
One Impulse From Vernal Wood (SOLD)
“One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man;
Of moral evil and of good
Than all the sages can.
Sweet is the lore which nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mishapes the beauteous forms of things
-We murder to dissect.
Enough of science and of art;
Close up these barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.”
This is a painting of a most enchanted wood, halfway between Ilston and the Gower Inn in the Parkmill area of Gower peninsula in Wales. These woody areas, as many artlovers will have realised by now, are a constant source of inspiration for much of my refractionist and post-refractionist work. This pine wood lies on one side of a bridge with ancient woodland on the other, the contrast between the knarled, mossy twisted ancient branches of the ancient wood across the bridge in clear contrast to the straight, textured, orderly pine trees this side of the bridge. In fact, crossing this bridge gives one a heightened sense of having moved from one region or realm to another, adds to the feeling of having been transported somewhere different.
This is the inspiration for this painting, this feeling as we view the clear late October light falling across this woodland path. I tried to catch the fact that the path is covered in layers of pine needles, mulched to make the most soft and slightly bouncy carpet of needles. It is these needles, layers heaped and heaped on each other that softens the light and gives it texture, catches the light in its soft grasp, making it almost fluffy. The carpet of pine needles fall to create a complete deadening of noise in this wood which is quite a beautiful affect, this complete silence. This adds to the wood’s sense of enchantment. The silence makes this almost a world apart, a secret quiet place to escape to and roam and explore and enjoy as a child. It is a great escape to somewhere unusual and oddly mystical. Enchanted even…
The painting has sold but you can buy a large limited edition mounted print here
I have been suffering from writer’s block. I started this post in March this year. I keep writing, rewriting it and then not publishing it. The problem isn’t that I don’t have any thing to say. It is more that I have too much to say and I didn’t know where to start or how […]
You have may well have seen images of County Sligo, Ireland, without necessarily knowing that’s where it is. It’s home to one of the most poplar views on Social Media. Here’s an example: And many more… It’s quite disconcerting to come across a view that you are very familar with but have never visited […]
