Way Leads on to Way: Spring Meadow and Hedgerow Paintings
This group of paintings has emerged over the past weeks, in a spell of unexpectedly beautiful weather. There have been long, bright days, and I’ve been working outside in the courtyard of my studio - carrying what I’ve seen on walks back into the space of painting, and also working from a sense of what is just about to arrive.
A Quiet Awen, 80×80cms
The hedgerows are beginning to shift. Blackthorn has come into bloom - that sudden, luminous flowering that seems to appear almost overnight - and with it, that unmistakable feeling that the season is turning. There’s a kind of quiet excitement in that moment. Not just in what is visible, but in what is coming next.
Spring’s First Telling, 80×80cms
Some of the paintings come directly from these encounters - the memory of a hedge in bloom, or long grass moving in the light. Others are shaped just as much by anticipation: the buttercups that will come, the verge beginning to fill, the sense of things gathering and unfolding. It feels like painting both the present and the near future at once.
Sweet Companion, 80×80 cms
At the same time, something has shifted in the way I’m working. The palette has lightened - more yellows, softer whites, a different kind of green - and the paintings feel more open, more fluid. There is more space in them, and more movement. I think this has come, at least in part, from time spent in Australia, where the light is different - brighter, more direct - and that has stayed with me in the work.
The Wilde Waiting, 100×120 cms
There’s also a familiarity in this landscape that I keep returning to. Having spent time in Wales again, something feels quietly known. Not something I can easily describe, but something that sits in the body as much as in the eye. The title A Quiet Awen comes from that place: a sense of something moving through the work, rather than something to be explained.
Each painting holds a slightly different feeling within this shared landscape:
A Quiet Awen
The Wilde Waiting
The Wilde Here
Sweet Companion
Spring’s First Telling
The Wilde Here, 80×80 cms
Together, they form a kind of loose constellation. The wild is not separate, but always present - sometimes waiting, sometimes unmistakably here. It moves between what is seen, what is felt, and what is just about to appear.
More than anything, these paintings come from being close to that moment - noticing the shift in the season, and feeling that quiet lift that comes with the beginning of spring.
Some or all of his body of work will be shown as part of the upcoming spring exhibition Bloom and Wild at Gallery at Home. I’ll share full details of dates and location soon.
Happy Spring!
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The Enchantment Of Bluebells