2024 and all that...

A recent portrait photograph of yours truly taken by artist Gregory Day

It was this time last year that I heard I had prostate cancer. Cancer is a word that you never want to hear when you are told to sit down in the doctor’s surgery. It would be a few more long weeks before my biopsy results and I would hear how bad it was and what sort of treatment I would be needing. It was a constant noise in my head that I found hard to turn off, and it’s been like that all year to a greater or lesser extent. Luckily, the cancer was just about caught in the early stages and my treatment ended up being surgery in May to remove my prostate done by a robot no less! I never saw the robot, but I had silly thoughts about being wheeled into surgery to see either The Terminator, Metal Mickey or the robots from the Smash potato adverts of my youth.

A sketchbook drawing I made in hospital

My mind has often felt very separate from my body this year. I find myself recalling experiences such as the walk into the operating theatre at the hospital where the change of atmosphere from the quiet of the corridor outside was palpable, and then, in the ante room, receiving the several needles of anaesthetic in my abdomen. I also think about the pain of moving uncomfortably around in the weeks following surgery, inevitably knowing I was doing too much as usual, to the continued months of recovery which is still ongoing. It’s been a bit of a year. 

Anyway, cheery stuff. Thank goodness for friends and family and their support, and as ever, the culture that I have experienced this year, either working on my own artwork in my studio, or the great books, music, and film and TV I have enjoyed this year which in turns has uplifted me, moved me, focussed me and distracted me. 

Writer Elif Shafak, author of 'The Island of Missing Trees'

A great friend, Amanda, who has been a massive support throughout this year in all sorts of ways and reignited a love of fiction in the weeks after my surgery where in the quiet of my garden I found myself totally absorbed in books that she had passed on. The first being ‘A Little Luck’ by Claudia Pinerio, an Argentinian writer, which was such a compelling page turner, and then the magnificent ‘The Island of Missing Trees’ by the Turkish-British writer Elif Shafak. These are writers new to me, and not books I would normally pick up, and that all seemed to the good. They really helped me move towards a different, unexpected and more diverse path with my reading choices that I am grateful for. I also absolutely loved ‘Sweet Sorrow’ and ‘You Are Here’ by David Nicholls and ‘The Horse’ by Willy Vlautin. I love both David Nicholl’s and Willy Vlautin’s books. They are so full of compassion and heart. 

Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee

My absolute standout album this year must be Waxahatchee’s ‘Tigers Blood’, which is so good. I love Katie Crutchfield’s emotional, meandering songs, which are delivered with such brilliant phrasing in her remarkable voice. I’m still listening to the album now, despite it’s release much earlier in the year, and it was wonderful to have the opportunity to select and share the track ‘Right Back To It’ when I appeared on Black Country FM’s Monkey Jamboree radio show in the summer. I also really went on a nice trip with Kurt Vile’s ‘Watch My Moves’, although this is an album from 2022, through the summer too. 

'The Bear'

I seem to watch less and less movies and TV, but I have really enjoyed all three series of ‘The Bear’ on Disney+. There is something really compelling to me in its feel, texture and energy and it’s moving depiction of the complexities of the characters lives as they try to hold together their dysfunctional family life. It’s all very funny and compassionate too. And in the last few weeks I’ve been completely absorbed in ‘Wolf Hall’. I have been so in awe of Mark Rylance’s superlative performance as Thomas Cromwell. He has an uncanny ability to draw you into his character’s lives that is like watching a magic trick unfold before your eyes, but all the performances were fantastic in this superbly written and produced series. It’s the best series I have seen in years, and the final episode was devastating. 

Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell in the superb 'Wolf Hall'

I head into 2025 less certain of where I am going than I have been in years. I have had some big changes in my life this year, not least also scaling back my teaching to 3 days since September, something I have wanted to do for years, and this year I finally took the plunge. It is a bit scary though financially, but it presents a new challenge that I think I need. And my painting? Well, I’ll still be doing it of course, but I feel at a bit of a crossroads (but I frequently do), yet painting does feel like an exciting and fresh adventure every time I step into the studio that keeps me very much alive and engaged. As the late Frank Auerbach said, ‘it’s just the most marvellous activity….’I head into 2025 less certain of where I am going than I have been in years. I have had some big changes in my life this year, not least also scaling back my teaching to 3 days since September, something I have wanted to do for years, and this year I finally took the plunge. It is a bit scary though financially, but it presents a new challenge that I think I need.

A recent landscape painting....

And my painting? Well, I’ll still be doing it of course, but I feel at a bit of a crossroads (but I frequently do), yet painting does feel like an exciting and fresh adventure every time I step into the studio that keeps me very much alive and engaged. As the late Frank Auerbach said, ‘it’s just the most marvellous activity...

 

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...