"Orange Poppy" Painting

My journey with art began as a young boy, drawing Grebes and Heron in ballpoint pen with my Grandfather. He used to take me to a nature reserve in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, where we would spend hours looking for particular birds on the lake with binoculars. I was fascinated that the drawings we did in pen and ink looked very much like the actual birds. I studied art at school and learned to paint with gouache, which I felt was a little dull and lifeless. My mother introduced me to oil paints and I stayed with this medium as the buttery consistency and vibrant colours were perfect for my style of painting. They offer a beautiful, realistic quality to painting quite unlike any other medium. I also suffered greatly from anxiety and have done so from 12 years old. This can be extremely difficult in social situations and in certain environments I felt overwhelmed and worthless. I found art and painting to be very calming and also empowering. It is what makes me feel confident and happy. I hope you as the viewer feel happy too. I paint in an impressionistic style, aiming to create deliberate strokes that capture the form and fall of light. I paint my water and sea ‘wet into wet’ to create a more natural flow, whilst the placing of colour next to each other with no blending creates a vivid clarity.