Places

I’ve spent a lot of my life around water. Recently, I spent several years sailing to many countries, eventually returning to the UK and building my studio in Malvern. Here are some of the results.

Sailing solo at night is a wondrous experience. Here I’ve attempted to bring some of this feeling to others. Mainly palette knife and various implements to blend the oil on the canvas, concentrating on texture, rather than any detail – which is how it is in reality, at night.

When I first saw the boat I now have, in Tewkesbury, it was a filthy day in Winter. This is looking out over the weir by the mill. Oil on canvas, no brush involved, just a palette knife.

Gaza city. What a mess. What a crazy fight with no winners. A friend told me how, when she was young, she had taken a single red ant and dropped it in the middle of several black ants. Then, horrified, not only was the red ant set upon by all the black ones but the entire red and black colonies, previously separate, came from their burrows and set upon each other. In times past these battles destroyed whole civilisations, but they could be decided by a single gladiator chosen from each side to fight to the death. I make no comment on the complexity of this war which is just so sad. Oil on large canvas.

Oil on canvas following a trip to Venice. It was mainly raining and cold, despite the Spring, and I’ve tried to evoke how I felt, away from the tourists, walking and observing.

Near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, reminiscent of the Wall, is a huge square, in which are thousands of different sized blocks, representing those killed in the holocaust. Whilst painting this subject, I thought of my jewish grandmother and I saw an area of the memorial, ‘desecrated’ by some workers who had trashed the place by leaving their detritus behind. I originally painted a picture of a friend with bright blue eyes. She really didn’t like the painting, so I over-painted it, this time as a moslem, still with these piercing eyes. In the final painting, only her eyes remain, overseeing the memorial, a reminder of the lunacy of intolerance and war.