I did Drawing and Painting in Edinburgh College of Art and then worked in ceramics and music untill I began working as a full time artist in 1988. In that year I had my first solo show at the Open Eye Gallery in Edinburgh and since then I have concentrated on painting the perceived  landscape.

I built this website in 2002 as a means to show my paintings to a wide audience and it has gone from strength to strength since then. Most of my work now consists of commissions and sales directly from here.

My interest in building a web site initially arose from a strong desire to actively represent myself as an artist through the “new” medium of the internet rather than the traditional, more passive route of relying on artist’s agents, galleries, or fate.

To interpret the outdoor environment in whatever way suggests itself when I am present in it. My starting point is always the actual scene at a specific time, and I tend to focus on the aspects of a landscape that are constantly changing like the sky and light, or movement in water to make a statement about this one moment.

I aim to concentrate on major elements within a landscape in the belief that selection is the first step to good composition when working from nature.

Techniques

Loads of folk. The Canadian “Group of Seven”, Turner, Egon Scheile, Constable, Paul Nash, Richard Bonnington, Paul Gauguin amongst many others. These are all artists whose work is influenced by observation and who have the technical mastery to communicate their vision.

I could name many, many others but when working I try not to dwell too much on other artist’s work in the hope that what small vision I do have is influenced as little as possible by the art world and as much as possible by the subject and its immediacy.

I’ve got a rabbit!

See - Fishing for Rabbits

.