Leading Painting

I have been drawing and painting and creating since an early age.  I attended Chester School of Art foundation course and then a BA(Hons) degree at Central St Martins in the UK, where I was brought up, in the south (Kent), but with family roots in Yorkshire. After my degree I continued to paint in earnest for a few years however eventually after meeting my wife Carol and starting a family a job was needed. I entered into the IT systems arena (oddly having done Art, Physics and Maths at A level!) and followed a career for many years while sporadically working on drawings and paintings as well as producing rafts of doodled drawings in notebooks at work, which I wish I had kept! ​ Recently I have returned to painting in earnest and full time, operating between Studios at Lake of Bays and Oakville in Ontario, Canada.  ​​ I have Always been most interested in our natural surroundings and people as well as people’s impact to nature. I am not interested in faithfully depicting a particular place, my work could be categorized broadly as Abstract Expressive Landscape.  I keep inside emotions and feelings about places and my own experiences or inner reactions and their memories.  These come through in the work I do, expressing the landscape, weather,  the air, sky, sea and land expressed as light, moods and tones.  It's about the natural landscape but mostly it's about our inner condition and the sensory nature of people and moments that enrich and inform our condition. ​ I mainly paint in oils as I find the natural softness and long drying time suits my process, process can often be rather engaged almost meditative or highly energized, I frequently make a lot of noise to the bemusement of those around me!  I’m normally working on a few pieces at any given time, contemplating and coming back and working/re-working until I think it's done.