2000-2020

House

2001 Oil on canvas 64 x 89 cm

Plant Drawing

2001 Pencil on paper

Rachel

2001 Pencil on paper

Portrait of Ariella

2002 Pencil on paper

Visual Field

2002 Oil on canvas

Rachel gave me this fabulously shaped canvas during her A Level art year and I used it to make this picture. It is based on space, vision and perspective. I had got interested in perspective looking at Piero Della Francesca and wanted to try and deal with receding space.

In part this painting is a way of exploring shifts in perspective through the visual field. The simple form of single viewpoint perspective gives a nice uncomplicated description of receding space to a single vanishing point into which objects can be put in a simple way like into a box. It’s a very powerful idea. However, we the way we actually experience space in real life is much more complex than this: since our viewpoint is constantly changing as we move through space. In a sense we create a new ‘vanishing point’ for ourselves every millisecond, every time our eyes move. These multiple vanishing points actually furnish our visual world and our experience of being.

This painting tries to use this fact. So the simple distant vanishing point on the horizon (the yellow tree) is generated using classical perspective, but as the eye moves towards the near distance, each shift downwards generates a new point of recession – and these flatten as the eye moves down a vertical axis from the distant tree. As I look down directly at the foreground, towards the ground beneath my feet, the perspective explodes as it becomes totally flattened and generates a very different charge. This is what happens at the bottom of the painting.

The same thing happens although less dramatically as one looks to left or right of the vertical….

The painting is structured around this armature, but the use of colour contains the emotional content, which also shifts towards the foreground.

Advancing Bush

2003 Oil on canvas

An image of a striking bush in our garden. The idea of this was the dynamic of of the bush advancing on the converging paths in the foreground and the perspective back to the house in the back.

House in Stia

2003 Acrylic on canvas 50 x 76 cm

John and Sita’s at Stia

2003 Acrylic on board Private Collection

Sunrise at Stia

2004 Acrylic on board

Garden and Camellia

2005 Oil on canvas 100 x 80 cm

Cursus eget nunc scelerisque viverra mauris in aliquam sem. Diam in arcu cursus euismod quis viverra nibh. Eget arcu dictum varius duis at consectetur. Duis ut diam quam nulla porttitor massa. Quisque non tellus orci ac. Nullam eget felis eget nunc. Vel orci porta non pulvinar neque.

Palm Tree in Cascais

2005 Pencil on paper

Stia

2005 Acrylic on board Private Collection

Vase 1

2005 Pencil on paper

Vase 2

2005 Pencil on paper

St. Paul’s

2006 Pencil on paper

Faucibus scelerisque eleifend donec pretium vulputate sapien nec sagittis aliquam. Id donec ultrices tincidunt arcu non. Morbi tristique senectus et netus. Malesuada bibendum arcu vitae elementum curabitur. Rutrum quisque non tellus orci ac auctor. Convallis tellus id interdum velit laoreet id donec. Imperdiet dui accumsan sit amet nulla facilisi morbi tempus.

Pelleas et Melisande in Sicily

2007 Acrylic on board 45 x 60 cm

I saw Debussy’s opera Pelleas et Melisande when I was quite young in a production at ENO and went when it was put on again at Covent Garden a few years ago. The opera opens with two figures lost in a forest. The prince, wandering in the forest away from the castle, and Melisande, enigmatic, wild, adrift in the wood, arriving from a past that is not specified, but understood as inconsolable. Their meeting is a tender evocation of confused sensitivity; she is terrified - “ne me touché pas” (don’t touch me) she repeats in the first amazing motif of Debussy’s score - “ne me touché pas”.

This limbo forest, with its texture of possibility and the drama and fate of meeting I wanted to echo in this painting done in a Sicilian olive grove.

Valley of the Gods

2007 Acrylic on canvas

For Pete

2008 Pencil on paper

I was on a skiing trip in January 2008 when I received a message one afternoon that Pete had developed a secondary spread of his kidney cancer. The next morning, I just had no appetite to go out on the slopes and I went down to the village, picked up a cheap drawing pad and a biro and went off into the snow. These drawings are the product of that day, drawings of scrubby bushes against the white snow.

For Pete

2008 Pencil on paper

I was on a skiing trip in January 2008 when I received a message one afternoon that Pete had developed a secondary spread of his kidney cancer. The next morning, I just had no appetite to go out on the slopes and I went down to the village, picked up a cheap drawing pad and a biro and went off into the snow. These drawings are the product of that day, drawings of scrubby bushes against the white snow.

For Pete

2008 Pencil on paper

I was on a skiing trip in January 2008 when I received a message one afternoon that Pete had developed a secondary spread of his kidney cancer. The next morning, I just had no appetite to go out on the slopes and I went down to the village, picked up a cheap drawing pad and a biro and went off into the snow. These drawings are the product of that day, drawings of scrubby bushes against the white snow.

Caroline

2009 Pencil on paper

Noto Antica

2009 Pencil on paper

Noto Antica, Sicily

2009 Pencil on paper

Sicillian Garden

2009 Acrylic on board 45 x 60 cm

Ariella

2010 Pencil on paper

Ariella

2010 Pencil on paper

Asolo, Sicily

2010 Pencil on paper

Botanical Garden Syracuse

2010 Pencil on paper

Palm Tree in Syracuse

2010 Pencil on paper

Forest in Noto Antica

2011 Pencil on paper

Anghiari – the town

2012 Acrylic on board Private Collection

Anghiari

2012 Oil on canvas 60 x 42 cm

A painting done in the Italian town of Anghiari during a four month trip there in 2012.

Edale

2012 Pencil on paper

Navajho Valley

2012 Acrylic on canvas

We were on our big trip across the American national parks in our camper-van and arrived in the Navajho Valley of the Ancestors.

Surviving a massive thunderstorm through the night and a sense that the Navajho spirits would come and get us at any time. In the morning it was beautiful, bright and clear and I had very little time to sketch out one of the sandstone towers that mark this part of the country.

Morning in Assisi

2013 Acrylic on canvas 50 x 40 cm

This is a sunrise painting - capturing the moment each morning from around 6.30 am when the first sun hit a particular spot on the grass outside our rented house.

Willow at the White House

2013 Oil on canvas Private Collection

Italian landscape for Andy

2014 Acrylic on board 30 x 60 cm

At Tate Britain

2015 Ink and pencil on paper

Growth and Form

2015 Acrylic on canvas 40 x 50 cm Private Collection

In China

2015 Ink and pencil on paper

Noto Antica

2015 Oil on canvas 75 x 123 cm

The ancient city of Noto Antica abandoned into ruins after a great earthquake in the 17th century, lies spread out over a ridge in southern Sicily. A mixture of white limestone, olives and city ruins remains. Pine needles and brilliance.

Olive Series 1

2015 Pencil on paper

Golant

2016 Acrylic on canvas 50 x 40 cm

Goyt Valley

2016 Pencil on paper

Humayun’s Tomb, Delhi

2016 Pencil on paper

Laura plays Bach

2016 Oil on canvas 120 x 90 cm

The cellist Laura Van Der Heijden played a house concert with us during her rehearsal period, played a Bach cello Suite, during which I did a series of drawings – which led to this painting.

Nagasar Palace, Varanasi

2016 Pencil on paper

Provence

2016 Ink and pencil on paper

Provence

2016 Acrylic on board

South of France

2016 Pencil on paper

Tyree

2016 Ink and pencil on paper

In Death Valley, May 22nd 2017 – the Manchester Arena

2017 Pencil on paper

Death Valley, May 22nd 2017

2017 Pencil on paper

Loss in Norway

2017 Oil on canvas 150 x 50 cm

This piece was composed during a walking trip into the Vestre Gausdal mountains in Norway with my friend Chris. It was June, and just in the period between snowmelt and the dark brown tundra of the Norwegian spring. The days are very long and we saw no other people for five days. During the walk I received a message from my mother’s nursing home that her health was deteriorating, and this sense of her immanent loss infused my time in the mountains. My mother died soon after my return and this painting done subsequently, combines the light of the mountains and her farewell.

On the High Line, New York

2017 Pencil on paper

Villa Joyosa

2017 Pencil on paper

Arnhem Tryptich 2

2018 Oil on canvas 76 x 91 cm Private Collection

Arnhem Tryptych 2014-20

In 2014 we visited the Arnhem battlefield at Oosterbeck to visit a site of great significance to my father’s wartime; the mission he took on to cross German lines to link with the US allies at Nijmegan. After our return I had enough time to recount my trip to my father before his death in June 2014. The triptych, based on his Arnhem mission, allowed me to meditate on his lifetime journey as well as this experience, and to process his passing.

Arnhem Tryptich 3

2018 Oil on canvas 76 x 91 cm

Arnhem Tryptych 2014-20

In 2014 we visited the Arnhem battlefield at Oosterbeck to visit a site of great significance to my father’s wartime; the mission he took on to cross German lines to link with the US allies at Nijmegan. After our return I had enough time to recount my trip to my father before his death in June 2014. The triptych, based on his Arnhem mission, allowed me to meditate on his lifetime journey as well as this experience, and to process his passing.

Edinburgh Castle

2018 Pencil on paper

In the Spiti Valley, Himal Pradesh, India

2018 Pencil on paper

On the Burren

2018 Oil on canvas 61 x 122 cm

This piece was composed on the Burren in West Ireland – like nowhere else to experience time and space stretching ahead..

Puja at 15,000 ft

2018 Pencil on paper

A walk high in the Himalayas; my guide, a devout Buddhist took me to what was styled as the highest monastery in the world, only habitable in the summer, and we arrived just at the the monks were entering the temple for their two hour Puja....I was allowed to sit in the semi-darkness as they chanted, processed, and played the ram's horn

Noemi 2

2019 Pencil on paper

Portrait of Noemi

2019 Pencil on paper

Sunrise Chandratal

2019 Oil on canvas 70 x 100 cm Private Collection

This piece comes from a walking trip in the Spiti Valley in the Himalayas. Up in a cold dark misty morning to see the sacred lake of Chandratal.