Puzzle Wood

I’ve recently started visiting Puzzlewood, in the Forest of Dean. It really is one of, if not the most enchanting and spectacular forest I’ve ever been to in the UK. Once a Roman iron mine, the pits and fissures of eroded limestone have long since been reclaimed by nature and completely covered by moss, ferns and fungus. J.R.R. Tolkien was a frequent visitor to the area and is said to have been inspired by Puzzlewood when creating the Old Forests of Mirkwood, Lothlorien, and other places in Middle-earth. It’s so other-worldly that the TV and film industry have also used it's magic to film scenes for Dr Who, Merlin and Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens.

I recently spent two whole days there, wandering it’s twisting paths, looking, taking reference photos and painting plein air. Access to the woods has been restricted and quite rightly so, to wooden-fenced paths, steps and walkways both up in the trees and down in the pits. This funnelling of human traffic keeps the disturbance to a minimum and stops delicate ferns and plants being trampled and spoiled. What you get then, is a truly magical walking tour of all its twisting, gnarled glory. The area is also a temperate rainforest where oak, beech, ash, lime and yew can all be found, twisting and turning their roots into the gaps in the rocks, making for wonderful organic sculptures.

From a painting perspective, it’s almost overwhelming how many options there are. Do I focus in on something small and close like a root or fern, or go large and wide to take in composition of trees and rocks? I feel there’s such a wealth of possibility that I’m going to be able to produce a really decent body of work from there.

Here’s a selection of paintings and some photos from my recent trip. Something relatively new for me, has been the urge to play with colour. There’s hints of blues, oranges and yellows in the wood that I really wanted to accentuate. There’s a creative freedom in pushing colour that I’m thoroughly enjoying.

I hope you enjoy this set.

The Discerning Eye

I was delighted to find I’ve been selected for this years Discerning Eye competition hosted by The Mall Galleries in London. I have exhibited there 3 times previously and always enjoy the show.

The ING Discerning Eye annual exhibition is a show of small, domestic scale, works independently selected by six prominent figures from different areas of the art world: two artists, two collectors and two critics. The selectors choose both from the publically submitted works and works by personally invited artists. Each selector's choice is theirs own alone and is hung in separate sections to give each its own distinctive identity. The impression emerges of six small exhibitions within the whole. It provides a rare opportunity for works by lesser-known artists to be hung alongside contributions from internationally recognised names. The only restrictions are that the pieces must be for sale, the artists UK based, the size of the work (50cm in any dimension) and that the selectors choose at least 25% of their section from the open submission.

This year’s selectors are... Will Gompertz, Director of the Sir John Soane's Museum; Adebanji Alade, President of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters; Gabrielle Blackman, one of the UK’s leading interior designers; Nina Murdoch, award-winning painter; Paul Carey-Kent, art critic and curator; and Carol Leonard, collector. Selected works will be shown in a group exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London, from 15 to 24 November 2024, and eligible for a wide range of awards, including the prestigious ING Purchase Prize, worth £5,000.

I hope to see you there!

The Woods

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to paint. This question has raised it’s head a few times over the past year and requires a lot of deep thought. I’m not one of those people that’s just happy painting anything, I really need to be emotionally invested or I can’t muster up that laser focus and tunnel vision that I need and enjoy so much when making the work. It’s got to consume me or I’m not interested.

Apart from painting, my main interest is bikes. Push bikes, not motorbikes. Proper bikes. I love them and have ridden them all my life, whenever I can. When I paint at local spots, it’s almost always accessed by bike. Not having to look for, or pay for parking is an obvious bonus, but it’s more than that. There’s something about having your studio on your back and two wheels under your feet, it’s just so liberating.

Most weekends I get up early while the family sleep and go out into the woods on my mountain bike, either locally in Leigh Woods/Aston Court, or a bit further afield in the Forest of Dean. I’ve been exploring these areas for over 20 years now, but I am still discovering new trails, it’s extraordinary. There’s a distinct thrill I get from turning a corner on a trail and realising I haven’t been there before. It’s a childlike excitement that swells up just as it did when I was 14 and exploring my local woods in Oxfordshire. “I wonder where this goes…?” What a captivating thought. Let’s find out!

What’s bizarre is that I hadn’t, until recently, ever seriously considered painting the woods by bike. I had done it in Wales, painting views in the Black Mountains and Brecon Beacons, but that is a 60-90 minute drive and involves some very serious climbing when you ride up there. Leigh woods is a 15 minute drive from my house and there are other beautiful woodlands just a 5 minute ride from my front door! The thing with plein air painting is it only really makes practical sense if it’s close by. 3 hours in the car to access a spot just doesn’t make sense when you have to pick your kids up from school at 3pm!

So, I put my mountain bike on the roof rack, dropped the kids off at 9am and then drove to Leigh Woods with my painting gear in my back pack and rode to some spots that I knew were beautiful. Good lord… I hadn’t realised how many options there are compositionally when you’re surrounded by trees… Literally every way you look there’s a painting. I’m normally incredibly fussy about my views and spend a lot of time scouting areas out, sometimes without my painting gear as I can cover more ground and save each potential spot to my phone, but the woods was different. It was more abstract. I was seeing shapes, not clearly defined foreground and background planes. This was about positive and negative space. It was about tone and texture. It was new and incredibly exciting.

Another thing… I like being alone. Painting in London, on the streets of the West End for example, is total sensory overload. It’s LOUD, there’s a lot lot of people, they’re right next to you, there’s bus fumes, sirens… well, it’s all a bit much for me these days to be honest. I’m 45 this year and something in me has definitely changed over the last 10. I’m quieter, I seek quiet. I move slower, I think slower, I want solitude, not crowds. Ironically, I feel more “surrounded” in the woods than on the street, but in a natural way. Walking into the woods, off the path is also glorious. Stepping over logs and ducking under branches, again, brings up those childlike feelings of wonder and when the dappled light hit the bluebells all around me, well…

I don’t want to gush too much about the whole experience as I’m not sure how it comes off, but I found it overwhelming in all the right ways. Shapes everywhere, texture everywhere, light pooling, and spring leaves glowing like kryptonite as the sun pushed through them. Wow, why didn’t I do this before…?

Starting the first painting was exhilarating, but daunting. A subject matter this different meant I couldn’t just start on auto-pilot, it was like starting again in many ways, feeling my way through it and just trying to be open enough to let the painting happen without over thinking it. Easier said than done. I was most pleased with this first painting of the day, there was an energy and rawness to it that I loved, something you can’t get if you phone it in, it only comes from being bold and letting go a bit.

I’m going to keep exploring this new realm. I’m at the absolute beginning with it as a subject matter and feel there’s just so much potential here. Scale is the main thing on my mind right now… The abstract nature of these natural compositions lends itself very well to painting large, I feel. This will put me squarely into very new territory but I am absolutely up for the challenge and can’t wait to get stuck in.

Onwards!

Interior business commission

I was thrilled to recently complete an interior commission for a collector in Hampstead who is also a business owner. Alex is the owner of Alexander’s storage and removal company, with a facility based near Heathrow. We discussed which elements he wanted to appear in the piece, then I spent a few hours Art directing the warehouse, having crates moved from here to there and employees posing for me chatting and moving boxes. It was all a huge amount of fun and I’m thrilled with the result.

Alex started as a man in a van a few decades ago and it’s amazing to see what he’s built the company into, it was a honour to encapsulate it all in oils.

If you’d like a interior painting of your business, get in touch.

Albany Gallery & Sugarloaf

I delivered my paintings to Albany Gallery this morning, six paintings for the their mixed Xmas show. I haven’t shown there before but the Cardiff location seemed like a natural fit, seeing as I’m painting the Brecon Beacons and Black Mountains. The staff were all lovely, hopefully we’ll have a decent show despite these uncertain economic times. If you’d like to go, it runs from 11 November - 7 January with the private view next Friday 11th Nov, 5-8pm.

After visiting the gallery I drove up to Sugar Loaf mountain, near Abergavenny. It marks the start of the Black Mountains and provides some spectacular views across to Pen y Fan. I took my new mountain bike, a titanium framed Sonder Broken Road. Sonder is the bike department of one of my favourite outdoor companies, Alpkit. It’s designed for Bike Packing, with very wide 2.8” tyres and a pannier rack on the rear which means I can take all the painting gear, food and clothing I need for a full day in the hills. It’s all pretty heavy when fully loaded, but you can cover a lot of ground far quicker than you can on foot and the descents are incredibly fun. Combining my love of cycling with painting is something I have been wanting to do for ages, so it’s very satisfying to finally make this happen.

Sugarloaf is steep. I managed to ride about 70% of the way up before getting off to push to the summit. It was all worth it though, the weather was doing exactly what I wanted it to; scattered cloud and bright sun, casting gorgeous purple shadows across the Black Mountains. Perfect. I met some lovely hikers up there and a few even took my picture for me. I love outdoors people!

I set up my plein air stuff and got to work on a painting. Working outdoors is always challenging, but on the summmit of mountains, it’s even harder! Weather changes very quickly, it’s cold and windy and I chose to paint seated because I didn’t bring my tripod to save weight on the bike. The clouds were moving quickly across the hills so the painting was more an approximation of what I was seeing rather than my usual direct transcription. It wasn’t my greatest piece, but it was good fun.

I decided to wrap up when I could no longer feel my hands and throughly enjoyed the incredibly steep and rocky descent off the summit on my bike. Woo hoo! More of this!

Black Mountains by mountain bike

I have been waiting for a “dramatic weather day” to venture back into the Black Mountains, but this time on my mountain bike. I wanted to see that low cloud that literally touches the hills and have mist swirling around me, some real atmosphere! I kept an eye on the weather and picked a day that had a forecast for intermittent rain and set off to South Wales with my bike on the roof rack.

It was raining when I arrived in the Black Mountains, thick grey cloud covered the hills and was worried I wouldn’t be able to see a thing. I took a right after Crickhowell up the A479 which runs right up the valley, but after a few hundred metres it was closed, sod’s law! I managed to take a side road which runs parallel to the main road and zoomed up the single track, past farms and cottages. I got some great reference photos along those roads and managed to get all the way up the valley to the lay-by at the base of Mynyydd Troed and Mynydd Llangorse.

I rode (pushed) my bike up Mynydd Troed and rode along the plateau, taking photos as I went. It was incredibly peaceful up there, alone in the mist with just sheep for company. I really do love being alone in the mountains on my bike, it brings back wonderful childhood memories of walks with my parents on Dartmoor, slightly wet, slightly cold, but totally exhilarated and happy.

I did meet one person up there, a lovely chap collecting mushrooms, or “mountain medicine” as he put it…

After Mynydd Troed I rode back down to the car, stocked up on snacks and pushed up the other side to the top of Mynydd LLangorse. The stormy sky was putting on a real show while I rode alongside a sheep farmer, chatting to him about training sheep dogs. When I got to a good vantage point, I sat down and just watched nature do it’s thing for an hour, before riding back to the car.

Just as I set off, the sun came out (obviously) so I had to keep stopping in lay-bys and jumping out to get some reference shots of the incredible autumn light show that nature was putting on for me. What a treat!

Brecon Beacons by gravel bike

I thought for a while that a bike would probably be better than my just my feet for accessing the Brecon Beacons and Black Mountains in South Wales. You can carry a lot of stuff on a bike and going downhill is an absolute riot. I have a lovely Titanium framed Planet X Tempest gravel bike that is perfect for bridleways and country lanes, so rode down to the station and got the train up to Abergavenny.

There’s a long hill with a spine on the top that sits near LLangorse lake that has a good view of the Beacons and Talybont on Usk. I started there and rode/pushed the bike to the top. It was a glorious day, perfect for sketching, so I found a comfy boulder and did a few pencil sketches.

I then headed down onto the road and pedalled my way to Cantref, which has some stunning views of Pen y Fan.

I got a bunch of photo reference, before heading North to Brecon and up Coed Fenni Fach. I don’t think the trail up there gets used much as it was incredibly overgrown and tough going, it felt like pushing through a bracken jungle at times! All good fun.

After Fenni Fach I went up the very steep Pen y Crug. The trails were far more open and easier to navigate and the views were better from the top! You can see 360 degrees and right across Brecon to the Black Mountains and also back towards Pen y Fan. Lovely.

I was pretty exhausted after all that, so it was back to Abergavenny station and the train to Bristol. A very satisfying day, with loads of new spots discovered for future paintings. Hurrah!