I have always painted and drawn as an interest but it wasn’t until Covid that I had time to really devote to it, and I haven’t really stopped since !
I love to paint landscapes and although I see many wonderful views, I think – ‘I don’t really know that view, it’s not my view’.
What does feel like ‘my view’ is the waterways, roads and canal near where I live, plus other areas that are significant like railways stations I am familiar with, we spend quite a bit of time waiting for trains etc and I study the lines and shapes around me.
I come from a small town near what once was a very industrial area and loved the views from buses and trains of post industrial buildings and city roads.
I combine that with a life long love of Film Noir with its moody lighting and dark streets, and it’s sense that something is about to happen.
If I had to say simply what I love, it’s to see the beauty in something ordinary like a motorway flyover or bridge caught in car headlights at night, the way shadows distort is so interesting.
I tend to treat the watery paintings ( mainly of the Thames ), differently to the roads and more urban subjects, I leave a bit more to the imagination as the lines and shapes are not so fixed.
With the more urban ones, people say to me ‘oh you paint cars’ but I don’t really, I mainly paint the reflections that the light makes on dark roads and the cars are part of the pattern of shapes.
There are so many light sources on an urban street or road – so that every object has a myriad of shadows not just one, plus the lines of the over-head flyover etc, enclose the whole painting.
