The transformative power of oil & Cold Wax medium

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 October 2024 I gave a presentation and live painting demonstration to the Isle of Ely Art Society. The event was held at the Methodist Church, Chapel Street, Ely, and focused on my working process with oil and cold wax medium. 'The First Temple' 130 x 100 x 4 cm on canvas The Demonstration The session centred on the layered approach that characterises my practice — the use of brayers, palette knives, and unconventional tools to build up and rework the painted surface. Cold

Gold enamel and cold wax medium

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.

The question I am asked most often is how oil paint and cold wax work together. This post draws on my current studio practice to describe the relationship between the two materials — how they interact, how I mix and apply them, and what the medium makes possible that oil alone does not.

I returned to the Edinburgh Art Fair in November 2023, showing a selection of forest paintings with Linton 59. Edinburgh is always a serious context for contemporary work — the audience is engaged and the standard of exhibiting galleries is high.

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

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.

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.

Damien Hirst used formaldehyde; he would have been better served by an eco-friendly peat bog. 'Between Worlds' abstract Fenland painting..

'After Glow' 80 x 80 cm Acrylic on Canvas 'Afterglow' — The Light Series This painting belongs to The Light Series, a group of works concerned with the landscape of the Cambridgeshire Fenlands. It is a personal reflection on the open fields and skies of East Anglia, though the work carries no topographical information to act as a compass or guide. There are no landmarks, no trees or hedgerows, no features that would anchor the image to a specific place. The viewer is left wit

'Shallow Lands' 100 x 100 cm Mixed Media on C Paint can be applied with almost anything that will hold it. I rarely use brushes in my current work — not from any aversion to them, but because working with brushes alone tends to return me to a familiar repertoire of marks and painterly qualities that become predictable over time. The introduction of unconventional materials and tools has been both liberating and demanding, opening up surface possibilities that a brush simply c

'One Hundred Years of Solitude' 150 x 100 cm Oil on Canvas

Borderlands. An abstract Landscape painting by Peter Corr. See his work at the Battersea Affordable Art Fair 21 - 24 October 21

This multi-layered mixed media oil painting represents a development of my New Forest series and continues my engagement with nature and land. The surface consists of multiple layers of oil and cold wax, with a marked impasto and strong textural qualities. The gold enamel has a soft patina and mirrors elements of the colour and tone of the immediate environment. Gold has been applied selectively to some of the vertical forms, providing intense points of reflective light again

I have arrived at an interpretation of the Fenlands through working with materials and actually living here and experiencing the...

A landscape painting of the Cambridgeshire Fenlands by the artist Peter Corr

Surface texture is one of the most distinctive qualities of my landscape paintings — a quality that is both visual and physical, and that is central to the way the work is experienced. The texture is not applied as a decorative element; it is the result of the painting process itself, the accumulated evidence of the decisions and revisions that went into making the work. Building the Surface The surface of a painting in oil and cold wax is built up through successive layers o