"Validation." Painting

I am a painter based in Scotland, working mostly in oils. I paint clearly in a world that has gone preposterous and blind.

My subjects run from the quiet corners of the countryside to the more unsettling corners of the mind: masked figures, menials, ideologues, the recently divorced, the wilfully ignorant, and the occasional floating stone. I am, by nature, sometimes an iconoclast—though I suspect that's rarely a selling point. I paint these things because some subjects are easier to look at once they're framed.

I paint in two directions. One is the pastoral: lanes, hedgerows, estuaries, sunsets—work that offers a breath of air and asks nothing difficult of you. The other is psychological: portraits and tableaux that ask uncomfortable questions about class, identity, mortality, and the stories we tell ourselves. I don't see a contradiction. A good landscape and a good satire both depend on the same thing: noticing what everyone else walks past.

My approach to technique is deliberately varied. Some pieces take months and very fine brushes; others are knocked out in an afternoon with a palette knife, or whatever's to hand. I've learned not to predict which will resonate—the market is a mystery, and the pieces I sweat over are rarely the ones that get the most attention. I've stopped apologising for the quick ones.

What unites the work is a refusal to be pretentious. I'd rather a painting be honest, strange, and a bit funny than grand and empty. The humour isn't decoration; it's how I keep looking. If a piece makes you stop, look twice, and smile—or wince—then it's done its job.

Thanks for looking. I hope something here stops you.