Blog

I’m currently making some of my paintings available to purchase as part of the wonderful Artist Support Pledge #ArtistSupportPledge scheme which was founded by Mattew Burrows in response to the Covid-19 situation.
If you’re interested in any of the paintings listed here please email me

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My painting practice is currently focussed on plants in interstitial spaces.
Due to the nature and locations of these opportunist plants, I often return to a site where I’ve made notes or sketched and find that the plant has been cut or poisoned.
I’ve been considering how to respond to this in my paintings. ‘Groundsel, March’ presented one option through it’s ‘finished unfinished’ qualities.

I’d hoped to finish Carter Street Dandelion in one en plein air session (see Carter Street Dandelion, Work in progress, 21st April. However there were some areas that really needed work (and I think there still are).
It’s an interesting challenge to find the balancing point between the intentional and accidental; between the painting’s flat, work in progress and being overworked.

Join me on Saturday 11th May for a 2.5 hour drawing an mark making workshop.

I’ll be bringing a sense of the garden into the studio and up to eye level with a collection of plant forms to inform and inspire.

We’ll explore line, texture and tone using a range of dry and wet media including pencils, ink and gouache on paper. And we’ll try some improvised drawing tools to challenge and refresh our mark making. The focus is on the process and experience of seeing through drawing, rather than creating a finished artwork.

Details and booking for the morning workshop here or the afternoon workshop here. Update: the afternoon workshop is now fully booked.

I’m currently working on a project that celebrates the music of my home town.

Mappa Music is a big, hand drawn, alternative map of Wakefield, where all the street names are replaced to celebrate bands & musicians, past and present, from the Wakefield District.
#MappaMusic is part of the Long Division #OntoTheStreets commission programme. The map will be exhibited during the festival starting on 29th May.

People are invited to suggest who they’d like to see on the map via this form.
All the names on the map will be drawn from the list of suggestions. It’ll be an interesting challenge seeing how many names I can fit on the map – to date there have been almost 200 responses.

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Redbox Gallery is a decommissioned K6 telephone box that has been renovated by Horbury Civic Society. Redbox Gallery hosts a programme of contemporary art exhibitions curated by Graham Roberts.

In February 2019 I was commissioned to create a piece for Redbox Gallery. I joined Horbury Walkers on one of their walks from The Cluntergate Centre, making notes of path side plants that we saw on our walk. I later returned to make sketches of the plants that I used as starting points for an installation of drawings in the windows of Redbox Gallery.

The drawings can be viewed from the pavement, the installation is illuminated in the evenings. Exhibition continues to 22nd May