In April 2025 I showed a new group of paintings at Fresh Art Fair, Cheltenham Racecourse. The works were part of my continuing forest series — each one an attempt to hold the particular quality of light and structure that draws me back to woodland as a subject.

In November 2024 I showed a new body of work at Manchester Central, exhibited through the Darryl Nantais Gallery at Linton 59. The paintings continued my ongoing engagement with woodland and forest — large-scale works in oil and cold wax that explore structure, light, and the threshold quality of the natural world.

The question of detail in painting is not technical — it is philosophical. This post reflects on how I approach the relationship between precision and openness in my work, using a painting of Eaves Wood in Lancashire as a starting point for thinking about what detail is actually for.

Using cold wax medium with oil paint to create a forest

This is the work currently in the studio. I have decided to produce a series of paintings based on the VolksPark in Berlin

For centuries, the death of painting has been proclaimed. Since the invention of printing during the Han dynasty, artists have anxiously watched each new technological advancement. When the printing press emerged, artists had valid concerns, but they eventually leveraged mechanical reproduction to replicate their work and reach a broader audience. With photography's arrival, it became clear that the representation of reality could be handed over to an optical device capable o

How to be creative with oil paint and cold wax. Using Jeff Becks guitar playing for inspiration

Every painter knows the experience of stalled momentum — the studio that feels resistant, the canvas that offers nothing back. This post reflects on what that state actually is, and on the particular discipline of returning to work not when inspiration arrives, but before it does.

Many artists will tell you that painting is a constant struggle — a battle with materials and ideas. To make paint say what you want to communicate is a never-ending challenge; it requires commitment, resolution, and self-belief, and paradoxically, a measure of delusional thinking. The tortured artist, working against impossible odds to release an inner creative spirit, is the stuff of folk legend. If the objective of personal expression could be readily achieved, a single pa

The Edinburgh Art Fair is one of Scotland's most significant annual celebrations of contemporary art, bringing together galleries, collectors, and artists from across the UK and beyond. Held at the Edinburgh Corn Exchange, the fair offers an exceptional opportunity to encounter a wide range of original works in an accessible and welcoming setting. The Exhibition In November 2022 I exhibited new work at the Edinburgh Art Fair. The fair ran from 18th to 20th November at the Edi

Cold wax landscape painting techniques

The surface of a cold wax painting is never passive. This post explores how I approach the building and reworking of a painted surface — the layering, the scraping back, the moments of decision — and what it means for a painting to feel alive rather than resolved.

I have been painting landscapes for over fifty years, working primarily in oil and cold wax. My practice is rooted in the Cambridgeshire landscape — its flatness, its particular quality of light, the way the horizon holds everything in a kind of suspension. This is a brief introduction to the work and the thinking behind it.

The more I paint images of the forest, the more I see trees as a cipher — a kind of encoding, a representation of something else. This painting finally declared itself to me after a few weeks of alternately applying, layering, and removing pigment. 'Natural Theatre' 120 x 100 x 4 cm Oil & Cold Wax on Canvas Painting as Excavation This is painting as extrusion or excavation — not unlike a sculptor releasing a figure embedded in a marble block, or an archaeologist revealing an

Cold wax is not simply a material — it is a way of working. This post describes what cold wax medium is, how it behaves in combination with oil paint, and why its particular qualities — resistance, translucency, the way it holds a mark — have made it central to my practice over many years.

I was recently contacted by a book publisher looking for a suitable image for the front cover of a new title. He was searching for something dark and mysterious to represent the Fenlands — and had come across my photography project completed during the lockdown period. 'Cambridgeshire Fenlands' Photography by: Peter Corr The Fenland Photography Project Followers of this blog may recall the project I completed during lockdown: a series of black and white photographs of the Cam

I have always considered Cubism to be the key movement in the development of contemporary art — the ultimate catalyst, a clean break with tradition and a revolutionary way of seeing, interpreting, and reconstructing the material world through painting. After Cubism, there could be no return to the false comforts and certainties of representational painting. It fatally undermined conventional ways of recording what we see. For the first time, the supremacy of Renaissance persp

This work represents something of a departure. It is a graphic rendering of a winter tree, with a pronounced emphasis on drawing and linear qualities — a shift from the more atmospheric landscape work that typically occupies my practice. The painting uses oil, cold wax, bitumen, pumice stone powder, and enamel on an 80 × 80 cm canvas. 'The Dream of a Golden Tree' Oil, Cold Wax, bitumen, pumice stone, enamel on 80 x 80 cm Canvas Materials and Process The general process is re

In May 2022 I exhibited new paintings at the Hampstead Art Fair with Linton59. The setting — on the edge of Hampstead Heath — felt appropriate for work rooted in landscape. This post documents the paintings shown and the context of the exhibition.

After several years of working with oil and cold wax, I have come to understand the medium less as a set of techniques and more as a set of conditions. This post reflects on what those conditions are, and how they have shaped the way I think about painting.