April 15, 2021

Well. Not quite. About half of the 'Lockdown lane walks' series I've been concentrating on lately

April 15, 2021

Here are the results of lockdown shopping visits to Shaftesbury. As a break from the studio, I'd sit with my takeaway coffee and scribble what was around me. Some of these sketches are now available from the lovely new Folde shop at the top of Gold Hill in Shaftesbury

April 05, 2021

Scribbles from a visit to Shaftesbury. Bits of Gold Hill, the bread queue and my boot

March 30, 2021

Massive thanks to thisisalfred.com  for letting me ramble on about my Lockdown lane walks series of paintings

It’s been a tough year for us all. Perhaps that’s what makes good news seem even sweeter if it arrives. I’m lucky to have four watercolours selected by @royal_institute_watercolours for their Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours 209th Exhibition @mallgalleries I am really grateful and invigorated by the nod from the society’s members.

March 19, 2021

Very happy that 'Puddles in the lane' has made it onto the longlist for Jackson's Painting Prize . There are 400 selected works from 8674 entries

March 04, 2021

An actual exhibition open now!

Really pleased to be included in The Arborealists exhibition in Gibraltar at the Gustavo Bacarisas Gallery. Have a wander round here

March 01, 2021

Really pleased to have work included in the SGFA Drawing Together online exhibition

March 01, 2021

Very pleased to have work included in irreplaceable.world a brilliant new website highlighting art and the environment

February 18, 2021

After standing ungrazed for over ten years the field on the left was recently rented out. The new farmer obviously loves kit and having a tidy up. The youngish (perhaps 80 years old) tangled oak in the foreground had a main limb hacked off as the new tenant wanted to be able to drive his digger beneath it. All the hedges and trees that had become lovely straggly wildlife havens could have been left or layed but were instead chainsawed back to a 'neat' box shape.

To allow stock to graze there, the whole area was cleared leaving a series of pyramids of hedge cuttings and tree branches that were eventually lit making massive bonfires that took days to burn down. The field and its funeral pyres of smouldering brush looked like the Dorset equivalent of rainforest clearance. After all this carnage and grubbing up of who-knows-what was establishing itself, the tenant has left this patch and moved to a field a little way down the valley. I know farming is tough and I'm sure he's doing his best while probably getting a small living from livestock, but this just isn’t right. I bet he'll be warming up his digger and chainsaw for another tidy up.

Ironically the hedgerows and trees he takes down all form part of the bucolic backdrop of the view from Gold Hill in nearby Shaftesbury, one of the most famous scenes in the country. Leaving aside all the environmental damage he's done, it amazes me that one man is allowed to change thousands of people's aspect with his out-of-date farming ideas.