City life Painting

I am an artist from Manchester. I paint cityscapes in a fresh and vibrant style using colour and texture as key elements of interest. My focus is the colour, light and tone of the city, as well as the people that live and work there. I am interested in the way the light interacts with the architecture in different weathers and times of day. Cities are constantly changing, fast moving, exciting and dynamic; a world in one place, evolving and providing endless opportunities. The evening light is a particular favourite because I have a particular love of blues and magentas, and indeed these colours run through my paintings. Most recently I have translated some of my cityscape experiences into townscape and landscape paintings. They are also dynamic in their own particular ways and I try to capture this in my work, painting from sketches created on location. I use a wide range of different media including pen and coloured pencils, but my preferred medium is oil. I find that sketching is an intrinsic part of my work. It helps me both to memorize and understand key details of the subject. I take the sketches back to my studio and create the oil paintings there, using mainly a palette knife and brush. This keeps my art spontaneous as well as enabling me to create the colours and textures that excite me.