Things have been so busy of late and my output has greatly reduced. However, I have returned to oil painting. I revisited this piece I started last year and put in a few more hours to finish it. The scene was from a few summers ago when I visited Pen Arthur forest for the first time. The piece takes me right back to that day when the late summer afternoon sunlight struggled to penetrate the canopy.
This very small sketch/doodle, enlarged, inspired a six foot tall painting. The background on the painting is incomplete. I'm back at this work in progress based on this small image from a sketchsheet. This painting will appear at my solo show in Thunder Bay in a couple years.
I started this oil painting in Feb 2020, and finished it in April the same year. I guess it's a tribute to Welsh beaches in winter - miles of sand, and barely anyone around.
My first foray into oil paints in 2017. This one is inspired by the view from the mountain pass (a road featured several times on Top Gear). Being new to the medium, I had a lot to learn about how it worked. I'm still not sure whether I'm happy with it or not, but I think it would be worth doing again now a few years down the line.
Inspired portrait from Troye's single 'Take Me Home' from spring 2020 - combining with his first EP 'TRXYE'. Charcoal pencils and red oil paint used to complete this.
This oil painting was , for me, an explosion of a new freedom I found after finally getting a home nearly 40 years ago, a room with a sink and a bed and a window. I hadn't painted for years, and never without extreme self-consciousness. But years of homelessness changed me and my appreciation of "art". That freedom eludes me these days, that 'ignorant' notion that I can do whatever comes to me. I'd love to get it back. Surely it's in us all. It may be better to paint to be satisfied than to paint to satisfy...
"Foxed Fruits" is a 36cm x 10cm x 19.5cm x 7.5cm oil painting on custom cut plyboard with acrylic Venetian gold embellishments. This piece is available for sale.
My first botanical illustration. Romulea rosea is a small member of the iris family indigenous to the fynbos biome here in South Africa. Oil paint on canvas. A4 size.
Utilising oil paint. It covers the idea of not taking the opportunities when they are presented to you. The sunset and plane flying away symbolise the end of a chapter that would have been closed off.
Oil paint on canvas; 21cm x 30cm. Named after the ghost glass catfish, I painted this a few months ago, taking inspiration from various translucent beasts
"Helios" is a world of infernal heat and these towers are the only protection the inhabitants have against the unforgiving environment outside. -- Oils on canvas with a knife.
This is a 19 in by 24 in oil painting on Bristol paper. I love this piece because of the textures and the bright but muted colors. I did this in 2019 in the spring at the Fashion Institute of Technology. The professor always pronounced "fruit" in a very bazaar way. It was a great class overall.
