'Landford, New Forest' — Cold Wax and Oil on Canvas

'Landford, New Forest' — Cold Wax and Oil on Canvas

This painting was made during my residency in the New Forest — a period of sustained engagement with a landscape quite different from the Fenlands of Cambridgeshire that have been my primary subject in recent years. The New Forest is dense, varied, and ancient; its light is filtered through canopy rather than arriving unimpeded across flat fields. Working there required a different kind of attention.

The New Forest Residency

The residency at Landford was a catalyst for a significant body of work. Working in a new environment, without the accumulated familiarity of a known landscape, produces a particular kind of alertness — the eye is forced to look more carefully, to find its own way into the subject rather than relying on established responses. The paintings made during this period have a directness and energy that I associate with this condition of heightened attention.

The cold wax and oil medium was well suited to the forest subject: the layered, scraped surface could hold something of the density and complexity of the woodland interior, the way light filters through multiple layers of foliage, the sense of depth receding into shadow.