An artist’s reflection on how rhythm, interval, and attention connect ambient music and forest painting—translating sound into structure, colour, and space

In June and July 2023 I held a solo exhibition of paintings in Linton, Cambridgeshire. The show brought together a selection of recent work in oil and cold wax, spanning a range of scales and exploring the recurring themes of my practice: the forest, the fenland, the quality of northern light, and the tension between representation and abstraction. The Work The paintings in this exhibition were developed through the layered process that characterises my approach to oil and co

Painting in front of an audience is a different kind of exposure. At Fresh Art Fair I demonstrated my approach to oil and cold wax — the layering, the resistance of the surface, the decisions made in real time. It is a useful discipline: the work has to speak without explanation.

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