Landscapes

My landscapes have always seemed to play a secondary role over the years, yet in many ways they have been the backbone around which my output has grown; a constant when doubts or problems have assailed other subjects.

A love of trees, and in particular, Elm trees, has been a mainstay in my landscapes. For many years, annual holidays with my parents meant a small caravan site in Kewstoke, Somerset, and to watch the decline of the Elm population in that county was sad indeed. Somerset’s loss was severe. Tall, stately, elegant, they succumbed to that dreadful disease. Even in death though, they managed to hold onto their elegance, and I drew them repeatedly, until being felled. I still paint them today.

I don’t paint ‘pretty’ landscapes, I prefer the odd spaces around fields, hedgerows and the like, but above all, they have to have some meaning for me.  Those years Kewstoke have meant that 90% of my landscapes are set there, as it was thirty to forty years ago. A sense of place, they call it. For Stanley Spencer it was Cookham, for John Constable it was Dedham Vale, for me it’s Kewstoke.