Looking Again
I've been thinking recently about how much of my painting begins with looking.
Not necessarily looking for something. Often it is noticing something that is already there, something familiar that I have seen many times before but suddenly see differently.
The three paintings I've been working on recently — the meadows, the dandelions and an old apple tree in my garden — began in very different places.
The Last of Summer, 2026
The meadows take me back to childhood. They are not paintings of a particular meadow so much as a remembered landscape: the feeling of being outside, of looking across fields, of a landscape that was simply part of everyday life. When I paint them, I am aware that I am painting something I remember as much as something I see.
The dandelions were much more immediate.
They were growing in the courtyard where I work, pushing up through the terracotta brick. There wasn't much else happening yet in the garden, but suddenly there were these brilliant yellow flowers. I was struck by the colour - the yellow against the warm red of the brick - but also by the fact that they were so completely themselves. They didn't need to be cultivated or arranged. They were simply there.
The Sun’s Coming Out
I've become increasingly interested in those moments when something ordinary becomes worth stopping for.
The old apple tree in my garden is another example. I've painted it for many years, although not necessarily with the intention of exhibiting the paintings. The tree is very old. After a period of bad weather it fell, but because its root structure was still there, it regenerated surprisingly quickly.
For me, the tree has become an image of resilience, but the painting is also simply a joyful response to the tree itself.
The Apple Tree
These paintings are quite different from the more atmospheric meadow paintings I've been making, and I think that difference is useful to me. There is a directness in them that I don't want to lose.
I've sometimes wondered about the simplicity in these paintings — whether it might be read as naivety. But I'm beginning to think that simplicity can be a choice: a way of allowing the thing itself to remain present rather than trying to make the painting more sophisticated than the experience that started it.
Perhaps that is what connects these paintings.
The meadow is remembered. The dandelions are noticed. The apple tree is known over many years.
They are all ways of looking at something that is close to me, and of trying to understand why it matters.
Last of Summer, Detail
I think this is becoming increasingly important in my painting: not simply what I see, but what happens internally when I really look.
And perhaps that is why I keep returning to familiar places and familiar things.
There is always something else to see.
