Whenever I go out into the landscape I take a sketchbook, pens, pencils, charcoal and water. This allows me to spend time making marks and recording words about how being immersed in the landscape really gives me a connection with it. I might add watercolour just to capture the basic colours along with light and shade. I’ll take some reference photos to refer back to once I’m in the studio. I’m a very messy worker, so it’s best for me to work in the contained space of the studio - I do paint outdoors on location but my messy way of working usually backfires and I end up covered in paint!

Once back in the studio I will add gestural marks to a large wooden panel (pre-prepared of course) with the aim of covering the board - white spaces, for me, need to be covered. I will add several layers of colour, texture and pattern to build up a base on which to work. I will stand to paint at an easel and often work on more than one board at a time as this gives me the freedom to express how the landscape feels to me. Referring to my sketchbook I will start to paint in an image, but leaving some of the colours and marks in the underpainting to shine through into the painting. The finished painting is a combination of my connection to the landscape and the textures within it, resulting in a semi-abstract piece.

I hope to give viewers something to look twice at in a painting and make them perhaps question what they are seeing. Painting gives me a lot of joy and I hope that the viewer is able to see that in my work and experience something of what I felt when painting