This post sets out the material composition of the cold wax medium I use — the beeswax, damar resin, and solvent — and describes how these elements behave during and after painting. It is intended as a reference for those who want to understand the physical basis of the work.

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.

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.

This large-scale painting was developed over an extended period in the studio, its surface built up through successive layers of oil and cold wax medium. The title refers both to the colour — a deep, saturated green that dominates the composition — and to the sense of enclosure that the vertical forms of the trees create: a vault of branches and foliage that shelters and contains. Surface and Process The work was made using a variety of tools — palette knives, rollers, and pr

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

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

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 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

Mike Tyson's remark has always struck me as unexpectedly apt for painting. You can plan a surface, intend a particular quality of light, work toward a specific resolution — and then the painting refuses. What happens next is where the real work begins.

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.

This painting was seen in my ‘Cambridge Envisaged’ exhibition in autumn of 2016 in the centre of Cambridge University.

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

Oil and Cold ax painting of a forest 100 x 150 cm on canvas

'Days stretched calm and plain to the horizon, as though we rose out of peat and will dwindle in a rumour of fog' Words by Emma Danes. This painting belongs to a group of works I have called The Light Series. It is a personal reflection on landscape — the landscape that surrounds me, the fields and skies of the Cambridgeshire Fenlands. The painting carries no topographical information: no trees, mountain peaks, hedgerows, or river valleys to navigate. The only compass availab

'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