I am a self-taught artist with an affinity towards Landscape Oil Painting, Still Life and Portraits.
Impressionism, Expressionism and the Abstract Art movements, have had a great influenced on my approach to interpreting the natural environment.
I began my painting journey around the age of 27, after returning from a six week European music tour with the Celtic-punk-folk-rock band ‘The Tofu Love Frogs’.
I remember deciding to become a landscape artist and then wondering where to start.
I packed up a large piece of chipboard into my 1962 Morris Traveller, along with oil paints, brushes and palette knife that I had bought at High Barnet’s Car Boot Sale and set off to look for a spot to paint. I climbed over a wall to gain access into Friern Barnet Mental Health Hospital, which had closed the previous year in 1993. I was attracted to the imposing Victorian institution and eerie history. Thus began my journey into fine Art and later running a community mental health project across Nottinghamshire, where I applied my Arts background.
In order to gain some guidance and reference points I studied part time at Barnet College’s Fine Art Foundation Course, between ongoing gigging and international travel.
After two years, fresh from a painting spell in Cornwall, I took my portfolio of landscapes to the University of Hertfordshire and was offered a place on their BA hons Fine Art Degree programme. At that time I attended Life Drawing Classes at Middlesex University during the evenings.
At Hertfordshire University, I became very interested in sculpture (Anthony Caro, Gaudier-Breska, David Smith, Moore, Hepworth etc.). I took up wood carving and then made a Metal Sculpture (with an art dealer friend), to be displayed in the Healing Field at Glastonbury Festival.
Whilst at the festival a chance meeting led me to relocate to Nottingham, where I stopped any formal study and applied my artistic skills, knowledge and experience to working with young people involved in anti-social behavior. Thus began my association with community development and involving the arts as a method of community engagement and pathway of personal development for people from disadvantaged backgrounds and complex health conditions.
During the Lockdown, I started oil painting again and after many requests to make my work available to a wider audience decided to set up this website called 'Arts Wellbeing'. It had been so long since I had painted using oil paints that when I went to dig them out they were unusable!
Sometimes it is a good idea to have a fresh start. I hope you enjoy the paintings that will follow and that it sparks a motivation to engage with the arts and enhance your wellbeing and quality of life, as it has done for me.
Zennor, Cornwall, Acrylic on Canvas
Newquay, Cornwall, Acrylic on Canvas
Southsea, Portsmouth, Oil on Canvas
Anjuna Beach, Goa, Water Colour
St Ives Harbour, Cornwall, Oil on Canvas
High Barnet, London, Oil on Canvas
Private Collection
Trent Park, LondonOil on Canvas
Ypres, Flanders, Oil on Canvas, 1998
Private Collection
Solar Eclipse, Hayling Island, Oil on Canvas, 1999
Private Collection
Craster, Northumberland, Oil on Canvas
Private Collection
Trent Park, London, Oil on Canvas
Private Collection
River Trent, Nottingham, Oil on Canvas
St Ives Harbour, Oil on Canvas
Private Collection
Padstow Harbour, Oil on Canvas
River Trent, Beeston Rylands, Nottingham, Acrylic on Wood, 2020
PRINTS AVAILABLE
Trent Park, London, Oil on Canvas
PRINTS AVAILABLE
Tessa, Trent Park, London
Private Collection
Bramcote Woods, Stapleford, Nottingham, Oil on Canvas
£800
River Trent, Oil on Canvas
PRINTS AVAILABLE
London Zoo, Charcoal on Paper
PRINTS AVAILABLE
artswellbeinguk@gmail.com
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