In The Artist's Studio....

'Winter Thoughts', oil on canvas, 100 x 100cms, 2021

As I look back on another year’s painting, I think about how I excited I am to see the re-emergence of the figure in my paintings in the last couple of years. This has either been as individual portraits or as figures appearing within the landscape paintings. 

The recent Scottish landscapes see the figure as a smaller element in relation to the whole, adding a sense of scale and possible narrative. These smaller figures have been a bit of a surprise development that has slowly creeped in after introducing a figure into my painting ‘Winter Thoughts’. I felt very nervous about it at the time, but it seems to have created different layers, feelings and moods to the work which I’m excited about. 

'Like Exploding Stones', oil on canvas, 120 x 120cms, 2024

The portraits of individuals such as Ben, Jack and Richard that I exhibited in June in my solo exhibition ‘Like A Song With No End’ at Rugby Art and Museum have been bigger strides forward in my work. The portraits of these individuals are placed in different settings with lots of details and difficult relationships in relation to the figure in space to work out.  They have been the most difficult paintings I have worked on for a long time, and I’m conscious that some of them possess a certain awkwardness, and I don’t think the audiences I have exhibited them to have enjoyed them as much as my landscapes, but I find them exciting, and as it’s me that’s making them that’s all that matters.  I’m not sure that I have found the right place to exhibit them yet either in terms of finding an audience and a better context for them. 

I have a postcard of the painting of Ben, ‘Thinking of a Colour’, that I use as a bookmark, and I therefore frequently look at it. There is certainly some awkward drawing, such as the easel, but I like it because it is more original as an image, and it possesses an authenticity to the subject which is hard to avoid. This, and the other portraits are, for me at least, a nice extension of my work from the edgelands landscapes I have become associated with in the last 15 years. I now feel that I tackle the three main subjects: portraits, landscapes and still lives. As David Hockney says, ‘what else is there?’. I’m conscious that this can be difficult for galleries and curators, and therefore me, who like to put what you do in a neat box, but who cares. I’m not doing it for them, I’m doing it for me (and besides they are hardly beating my door down!). 

'Thinking Of A Colour', oil on canvas, 120 x 100cms, 2024

I had the chance to develop ideas for a new portrait when I visited my friend the incredible ceramic artist, Craig Underhill at his studio, gallery and home in Reawla, Cornwall during the summer. I spent a social morning there catching up with him and his partner, ceramist Emma Spence but I must admit I had at the back of my mind that if the opportunity presented itself, I might ask Craig to pose for a few drawings and photos. You must be open to seeking and creating opportunities when you can and I’m very mindful of that. Craig obliged but he was a bit self- conscious, as I asked him if I could draw him working in his studio, and this made me a bit self-conscious too, so I relied more on taking some photographs of him in his light-filled, airy studio surrounded by his wonderful ceramic vessels, sketchbooks and paintings which are inspired by the Cornish landscape. It was Craig in ‘his world’ that I saw immediately and with excitement as the theme of a possible painting that related well to the other portraits of Ben, Jack and Richard. 

On my return to my studio in Birmingham, I completed further studies based on my photographs of Craig and planned some compositional ideas, working on the lighting and overall feel I was seeking for in a larger painting. I was trying to keep the painting itself ‘light and airy’ like Craig’s studio and wanted to paint the painting with a fresh directness, thinking of Matthew Krishnu’s paintings which I like a great deal, but also incorporate some of the textures and colour of Craig’s ceramics into the piece too. I enjoyed drawing the elliptical forms of the vessels on his workbench and their relationship to one and other and to Craig and the surrounding studio space. I think I achieved it to a degree, and I quite like it, bit a part of me preferred it in it’s earlier state after the first painting session. 

Finished painting, oil on canvas, 120 x 100cms, 2024

It wasn’t a painting I was able to do in one go, and as I added more detail, which seemed necessary, it lost something a bit. I am thinking of doing more on the face, which I would prefer to be a bit looser. But there you go…here it is as it is now. I’m a bit undecided as to whether to do more on it at some point, especially with the face, but we’ll see...

Like Exploding Stones...

 

'On The Beach', oil on canvas, 30 x 30cms, 2024

During the October half term, we went on holiday as a family to Fife in Scotland. We normally head up there for a week at this time of year to visit my brother-in-law and his family who live in Burntisland, a small parish town with a rich history which includes shipbuilding, fishing and being an important port for coalmining in the region until the late 1960s, before the de-industrialisation that ravaged so much of Scotland in the Eighties. In this sense, it reminds me of the scars and legacy this left on the Black Country region and its landscape and people where I grew up in during this time. 

Autumn is the best time of year to visit Scotland, where the landscape blazes with autumn colour on the Fife coastal path where we have stayed in various small towns and villages along here for several years. I, somewhat typically I guess, love the views of the oil rigs out at sea that can be spotted along the coastline.  The long sandy beach at Burntisland, where we stayed in a cottage at the end of this year, despite washing up each tide a line of black coal dust along the edge, is picturesque in the summer, and in the autumn has an appealing bleak beauty beset by ever changing weather conditions. 

From our cottage, only yards from the sea, we had wide views across the Firth of Forth to Edinburgh and the Pentland Hills. I would sit outside after breakfast each morning with a cup of coffee and a sketchbook as the sun came up, with the tide drawn back to reveal the muddy, wet sand where hundreds of long red legged Eurasian Oyster Catcher birds enjoyed digging the worms out of the sand with their equally bright red beaks. They weren’t the only ones doing this. On a couple of mornings, I enjoyed watching a distant lone figure obsessively doing the same, moving rapidly from one spot to another with his long-handled spade and bucket. I began equally obsessively drawing him one morning, trying to capture his movements. 

Sketchbook drawings

Sketchbook drawings

I wasn’t quite sure what he was doing so I asked him as he walked back up the beach and passed the cottage. He told me he too was digging for worms to go fishing with the following day. He had big Tupperware boxes full of them…Further on down the beach there was also another solitary figure with a large metal detector which beeped loudly as he scanned the beach floor. I was equally fascinated by him and made more drawings. By the time I had finished my coffee I felt excited because I knew I too had unearthed, in the act of looking and drawing, some ideas for some new landscape paintings when I would get back to my studio in Birmingham. And here are the results…

'Digging For Worms', oil on canvas, 80 x 100cms, 2024

'The Detectorist', oil on canvas, 60 x 100cms, 2024

Despite thinking that it might make a nice series to work on over the next two months, I ended up painting these six paintings in quick succession over a few days (the dark, black and grey one is of a different spot along the coastline). I’m really pleased with them and really enjoyed painting them. 

'Coming Home in Winter', oil on canvas, 100 x 120cms, 2024

'Like Exploding Stones', oil on canvas, 120 x 120cms, 2024

'Breathe', oil on canvas, 50 x 75cms, 2024

The subject allowed me to be freer and I experimented with different coloured grounds and also painting on top of older paintings, their images having a faint ‘ghost-like’ presence of colour and mark beneath. I think they would be a nice companion to my paintings of the Black Country and Midlands landscape at

some point...

'Like A Song With No End'...

'Fallen Leaves', oil on canvas, 20 x 25cms, 2024

Following on from my last post about my exhibition, ‘Like A Song With No End’ at Rugby Art Gallery and Museum, here is the press release and statement, with some of the smaller paintings that were on display, that I collaborated on with my friend, Amanda Kumariah. This was quite a different exhibition than other solo ones I have presented. The paintings contained a much more diverse range of subject matter, with more personal themes and thoughts held in the work and the observations and experiences that informed it’s gestation. Amanda really helped me express some of this in her editing and shaping of the accompanying statement. Thanks, Amanda...

'Fallen Leaves' (Ben), oil on canvas, 25 x 20cms, 2024

“Like a Song with No End,” presents my first portraits in many years. They depict Jack, Richard and Ben, all men at work as a delivery driver, a social worker on call, and an artist respectively. In these portraits, I wanted to explore not only the people, but also the spaces where they spend much of their time, endeavouring to reveal the psychological relationships the subjects have with these spaces. 

'Fallen Leaves', oil on canvas, 25 x 20cms, 2024

The solitary figure is also to be found in my other paintings set in the landscape, whether they are walking in the woods in winter, on a barge approaching us along the canal in autumn, or zipping along the towpath on an e-scooter, the spring hawthorn an abundant backdrop. 

I don’t want to tell people how to look at my work, but painting, like the process of writing this statement, is a push and pull of how much to tell and how to tell it. These paintings contain my thoughts about three generations of men in my own family, including myself, and their personal journeys. Despite the immediacy of my subject matter, its themes are far-reaching. These landscape paintings hold for me experiences of aimlessness, uncertainty, belonging and solitude. The solitary figures in my work are journeying through life, with destination unknown, and feelings of being off-centre or out of place prevail beneath even the sunnier landscapes. 

'There Is A World', oil on canvas, 120 x 180cms, 2022-24

I want the exhibition to contain many different threads to pick up and pull. I see so many exhibitions where an artist’s work is neatly wrapped up in some sort of conceptual package, but I don’t work like that. I want the work to feel more authentic to my everyday experiences and thinking, which is someone messy and chaotic and does not fit into a box. I think you, the audience, might understand that, because perhaps your lives are like that too.

The paintings attempt to place themselves in the present, but with a line of connection to previous artists, whose influences ebb and flow into the work across many centuries, including the paintings of Giotto and the early Florentine artists, Eastern Painting traditions and even the cave paintings of Lascaux. In the end, I don’t view my paintings as figurative or abstract. When thinking about them, I am often reminded of a quote from the painter Richard Diebenkorn, who stated, “Abstract means literally to draw from or separate. In this sense, every artist is abstract, for he must create his own work from his visual impressions. A realistic or non-objective approach makes no difference. The result is what counts.”

'Winter Morning', oil on canvas, 100 x 120cms, 2021

Painting is as much an expression of the painter as it is of the world around them. We almost cannot “help” bringing ourselves into our work, in more surprising ways that we realise. There are hidden meanings which I consciously work into my paintings, but when I step back, I notice recurring themes subconsciously expressed too.

I have held many exhibitions of my paintings over the years, and I always enjoy putting collections of different ones together. Much like life itself, my paintings evolve naturally from one thing to the next, like a song with no end. This exhibition celebrates the repetition and beauty of the song we are in, as artists and as human beings, a beautiful song with no end.

Like A Song With No End: June 2024

 

'Thomas of Gloucester', oil on canvas, 120 x 150cms, 2023

My frequent blogger activity, for over 10 years now, has certainly been usurped by my use of Instagram, but I do miss writing something a bit more thoughtful and coherent, and after a recent solo exhibition, I thought it was a bit overdue to write something in more detail. To stop, pause and rewind…

I finished June earlier this year having completed a whole host of different artistic activities. It was only as July began to arrive that I found myself looking back with a sense of relief on the last few weeks and saying to myself ‘did I really do all that in just one month?’. This is despite recovering from recent treatment in the form of major abdominal surgery for prostate cancer at the beginning of May. 

'Thinking Of A Colour', oil on canvas, 120 x 100cms, 2024

In the first 2 weeks of June, I held a new solo exhibition at Rugby Art Gallery and Museum which I called ‘Like A Song with No End’. It comprised the most varied mixture of mostly new paintings and prints that I have exhibited. Many of the paintings on display had been completed in the last six months, whereas a few I chose to exhibit were a bit older. The exhibition included 3 key portraits of my nephew, Jack and my friends Richard and Ben, a van driver, social worker, and an artist respectively. The paintings depicting these men at work were based on drawings and photographs I’d made whilst spending time with them, usually at their homes. 

I had approached these new ones differently, making a series of supporting drawings and photographs and spending more time with the sitters. I used to avoid any photography when I was creating portrait paintings years ago, somewhat bizarrely it seems now, but the rigour I held then in not using them was also very useful. I was just interested in recording the sitters face in a single drawing, which I would then use to inform the painting I would make back in the studio. I was a bit relentless, never wavering from quite strict imposed limits: just a drawing; same scale; no stories; no dramatic lighting, no background… I look back and reflect that I was a bit like the character of the Athlete interviewed by the protagonist journalist, Frank Bascombe, in Richard Ford’s novel ‘The Sportswriter’.

'So, You Are Tired', oil on canvas, 120 x 150cms, 2024

Another big difference in these portraits is that they are all based in different settings, with the paintings attempting to explore the relationship between the individuals and the places they occupy when they are working. I think this is most exciting in the portrait of Jack in his van where the two become really integrated, which is what the paintings are about, but I think they are all have a strength in this aspect, but ‘Driver’s Story’ has a more confident energy than the others.  I think they are all interesting paintings though and they are different to anything I have done before. I’m now thinking of how I can develop this into a larger series. 

'Driver's Story', oil on canvas, 150 x 120cms, 2023 at Rugby Museum and Art Gallery

Installation at Rugby Museum and Art Gallery

Three other paintings in the exhibition also contained the figure. These were in paintings where I had experimented with placing a figure in my usually unpopulated landscape paintings. The paintings, ‘Thomas of Gloucester’, ‘Winter Thoughts’ and ‘There Is a World’, held for me more personal reflections about three generations of the men in my family: my Grandad, my dad, and myself as a young man. The paintings all hold certain feelings of uncertainty, loss and transition and have a more romantic quality in their relationship to the tradition of landscape painting. This is a bit more present because of the inclusion of the figures, which also suggest some sort of narrative. The other paintings I chose for the exhibition were ones that I felt complemented and extended out from these key pieces.

'Winter Thoughts', oil on canvas, 120 x 120cms, 2022

'There Is A World', oil on canvas, 120 x 180cms, 2022-24

'Asleep Under Snow', oil on canvas, 80 x 100cms, 2022

I also hung a wall of smaller paintings, ‘Fallen Leaves’, that were an attempt to close in and extend the story in certain details from the larger pieces. Some of these were completed in the weeks just prior to the exhibition after my surgery and were enjoyable to do after the trauma of surgery but in the end, I felt the wall was just a bit too busy and the exhibition didn’t need them. Still…you try…

'Fallen Leaves', all oil canvas, dimensions vary 

I had a nice private view, and the exhibition was received well by visitors who left some very positive comments. I was really pleased with the exhibition too. It had a more ‘homely’ and personal feel that I have been trying to mine in one way or another for several years. There was a wider range of work and themes running through the work on display with various threads to pick up and pull. It felt like it could be this, or it could be that, or it could be this again… and because of that it felt more somehow more ‘real’ and, for me at least, possessed undercurrents of being like a play, poem, story or film.  At the end of the day though, I just hope that it was an engaging exhibition about painting. My very good friend, Amanda, who has been a huge support during these difficult few months, helped me write a good press release that expressed some of these ideas which I will share on a post following on from this one. 

Yours truly on 'The Monkey Jamboree', Black Country FM Radio

I also had chance to discuss the exhibition when I was a guest on Black Country FM Extra’s ‘The Monkey Jamboree’ Sunday night radio show, which is hosted by my friend Mark ‘Busby’ Burrows. This was my second time on the show, and I have really enjoyed it both times, and I get to select 6 of my favourite tracks to play, which is a real thrill. It’s a wonderful feeling when you hear some of your favourite music coming out of the radio. There was something quite moving about it too. This time around I chose music that had formed some sort of a soundtrack to the paintings. In case you are interested (and should you have missed the show!) these were: 

‘Right Back To It’- Waxahatchee

‘Darkness and Cold’- Purple Mountains

‘Newcastle’- Lankum

‘Cool Water’- Kurt Vile

Marrs'- John Grant

‘The Open Window’- HR Smoke 

‘Drowning in Plain Sight’- The Delines

You can check them all out on Spotify I’m sure, although it would be better if you bought the records so these great artists can make more amazing music…I also talked about my experience of being diagnosed with Prostate Cancer, which I was unsure and nervous about being open about, yet I was also keen to raise awareness of it for other men, as it can often go undetected until it is too late. 1 in 8 men are affected by it. I was, for once in my life, quite proud of myself for talking about it. 

Me and artist friend, Ben Sadler in front of my portrait of him at 'Bostin' Midlands Painters' at The Moonraven Gallery, Birmingham

Later in the month I exhibited my portrait of Ben, ‘Thinking Of A Colour’ in an exhibition I was invited to participate in called ‘Bostin’ Midlands Painters’ at a new Birmingham venue, The Moonraven Gallery. It was a very diverse show of a multitude of painters from the region, including comedian and TV presenter Joe Lycett, and it was nice to be asked to exhibit. I told my mom Joe Lycett was in it too, but she was less than impressed. “His paintings are rubbish’ she said, so that TV glitter failed to work it’s magic on her. He never turned up at the private view anyway. But I went to the PV, had a drink and a look around and a chat with a few artists, including Ben who was also exhibiting, before dashing over to Redditch to play my bass for HR Smoke, the band I’m in, for a 45 min set at The Glastonbeoley Music Festival that evening. Rock n roll! 

Bass playing legend...

Andrew Smith aka HR Smoke

Carl Taylor on guitar

Ed on drums

The week before we had also played a longer set at a local venue as a ‘warm-up’ practice gig too. The festival was great fun, if not a bit scary, but I’ve really enjoyed this extension to my creative activities more and more in recent months, especially now we are a four-piece band with the addition of Carl on guitar and Ed on drums, whereas previously, and for a few years now, it was just me and Andy, the singer and the songwriter, playing together. After the set at the festival, I felt a really nice sense of camaraderie with the other guys as we had our photo taken by Carl’s girlfriend, Suzie in the HR Smoke T shirts Andy had kindly had made for us for the event, that I struggle to find as an artist where I just plug away at the work and the attempt to promote it alone.  This all happened in the last weekend of June. 

HR Smoke, the band...

I told you had done a lot… After my surgery at the beginning of May where I wondered whether I would be able to fulfil any of these commitments, I had done so many different and exciting things… what a wonderful month it had been. I owe a huge thanks to all those friends and family who supported me through it. 

Painting is Hard....

'Community Engagement Officer', oil on canvas, 120 x 90cms, 2023-24

Occasionally I will stop and think how much painting is extremely difficult to do well. It requires an extraordinary amount of mental stamina and focus, skill and experience which can only be developed with many years of practice in the studio (I’ve now been painting seriously for nearly 35 years), many hours looking at other paintings, and an incredible will and determination. And still it frequently ends up being a complete mess or falling desperately short of what you hoped. So, you carry on…that’s the reason you carry on. It’s either that or give up. 

I haven’t given up, and in the last couple of months I’ve made some new paintings I’m pleased with that I would like to share….

I’m continuing to develop a renewed interest in painting the figure in the landscape, but I’m also interested in developing some more specific portraits of individuals, such as this one of Nick (at top of post), Community Engagement Officer for the Birmingham Canal and River Trust, who has been working with my students. 

I worked on it in the last week before Christmas, before then deciding to repaint the whole thing in about 3 hours in January. It was part of a process of experimenting and trying to decide what I don’t like as much as what I do. This is to develop a language for the portraits that’s a break from the ones I’ve done in the past and thinking about and applying some of the lessons I’ve learned from 12 years of landscape painting since.  Consequently, I’m not sure what I think of this painting just yet, but I know from experience the answer as to how to develop things further is not by doing any more work on this one, but keep doing others and keep exploring…

as yet untitled, oil on canvas, 120 x 150cms, 2023

I’m much happier with this large painting of a canal scene set at a spot I frequently pass on my dog walks and have made two other largeish paintings from, one set in the winter (one of my favourite paintings) and one in the summer. I wanted to do something more autumnal at the same scene and kept returning through late October with my camera, and the dog, to capture the changing autumn colours.  I was inspired by the glorious autumnal fiery colour of the autumn I had witnessed on a recent trip to Scotland, but the colour in the Midlands was rather different… Still, the dun greens, ochres and darker colours were still autumnal. I could have made things fierier with vivid oranges and yellows, but there is something about an authenticity that always nags and sits whispering on my shoulder…

One morning as I took some photos this barge came into view from beneath the bridge and slowly glided past me, it’s owner eyeing me somewhat suspiciously as he passed whilst I took some photos. I was excited and slightly unsettled by the experience, but I’m not sure why. When it came to creating the painting, I decided to include the barge, with the fear that it may look a little twee, but by keeping it quite small enveloped by the surrounding landscape I think I managed to avoid any tweeness. Instead, I think it has captured that unsettling, almost funeral, feeling I felt on the towpath that morning. I think it’s one of the strongest paintings I've made in a long time….

Same book, different page....

'Join Hands', oil on canvas, 120 x 100cms, 2023

I’ve completed two large paintings based on similar, but not the same, observations of people, largely retired, coming together at local parks and playing fields to exercise, but, more importantly, to be with other people. They are an attempt to look at some of the ongoing interests I have in the social and political that underpin many of my paintings through a different, more positive lens.

The unpeopled landscape paintings tend towards the weary and melancholy in feel, sighing under the weight of it all. They depict post-industrial ruins, overlooked spaces on the edges and quiet suburban streets explored on night walks by the stressed insomniac. 

I sometimes think that it can be easier to make a more overt social or political statement in art that can, on the surface, appear more serious, and I think some of my landscape paintings can possess this quality. But I believe these new paintings are just as serious a message about the strength in community, grass roots activism and socialism, and above all the love and understanding we seek and need in life found in friends and the companionship of others. There were lots of groups like this set up by ordinary people post-Covid that I find inspiring. They are also signs of what we are all in our own way looking for-the opportunity to connect with others…

'The Last Days of Disco', oil on canvas, 150 x 200cms, 2023

I called the largest painting ‘The Last Days of Disco’ after a Yo La Tengo song from the album ‘And Then Nothing Turned Itself Out’ which, with the aged figures appearing in some sort of dance, seemed to fit as a title, but I’m wary of it seeming like a mickey-take, which it certainly isn’t. I hoped it appears a more gentle and affectionate title. Interestingly it seems to hark back to my old paintings set in nightclubs made 25 years ago. Still in the same book but on a different page, or even just a bit further down the same one. The other painting, ‘Join Hands’, with the sunlight dappled grass in the large foreground, also seemed to echo the revolving light from the mirrored disco ball. 

'The Polish Rider'...

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

'The Polish Rider', oil on canvas, 90 x 80cms, 2023

As I come to the end of an interesting and experimental (but when is my painting not experimental?) year for my work, I’m pleased to announce that a recent portrait painting, ‘The Polish Rider’, has been selected for an exhibition on the theme of ‘People’ at The Open Gallery in Halifax, West Yorkshire in January 2024. 

The painting depicts a ‘rider’ for one of the many fast-food delivery companies- Deliveroo, Uber, Just-Eat, you name’em- on the pavement on his electric motorbike as he prepares to head towards his next job. The title references Rembrandt’s famous ‘Polish Rider’ painting, painted in the 1650s, of an unknown horse rider battling the harsh elements and terrain of a somewhat murky landscape. 

'The Polish Rider', Rembrandt, c1650s (a bit better than my painting...)

It’s an idealised, ambiguous figure painted in a much sketchier manner than Rembrandt is known for, but my own painting is an attempt to ironically counterpoint the older painting’s romantic idealism, with my rider painted without any ambiguity about the subject. The subject being in this case a low-paid worker from an ethnic minority background in insecure work and a perilous capital realist social situation. The manner in which it is painted, which is somewhat flat-footed and lacking the bravura brushwork of the Dutch Master, is also important. The only shared ambiguity is in the background, but instead of the mountains and romantic terrain of the original, my painting suggests a backdrop of banal shop-fronts and architecture and industrial sized bins in the inner city. 

My favourite part of my painting is that small area of green bin between and beneath the purply lilac sleeve on the left. That’s an exciting area right there!

It’s nice to get this figurative painting selected as I’ve been trying to reintroduce the figure in various ways back into my work this year and extend out from my landscape work. I’ve been exploring various ways to do this in terms of the painterly language, and how to paint the figure again, with some paintings being more successful than others. I’m not sure if ‘The Polish Rider’ is entirely successful (so it’s nice that someone else i.e the Open Gallery, thinks it is), but I think the idea behind the portrait is interesting, although perhaps a little cliched, but I’m beginning to firm up some ideas of ways of making things work better. 

Nicole Eisenman, 'The Triumph of Poverty', 2009

It seems necessary to shed some ways of working I’ve held onto for a long time, particularly the idea that my work must always come from direct observation. Although I still want to root the work in observations of the world around me I need to be more flexible about how I construct the paintings.  This was confirmed by a visit to the Nicole Eisenman exhibition at The Whitechapel Gallery I visited last week, which blew my mind. It was the best exhibition I had seen in a very long time; full of original ideas about representing the figure and taking more playful risks with narrative and the language of painting, all pooled from a vast well of different primary and secondary source material, culture, and art history. 

I returned from London wanting to get on with a new portrait I’ve been developing for some time now, and hopefully loosen things up a bit.