*NEW NEW NEW*

Check out the latest collection – “Gallery Visits”

Browse through the various galleries to see the kind of works I have been doing.

If you find a painting that engages your attention and would like to find out more about it or you are interested in purchasing it, don’t hesitate to contact me.

In the various galleries the paintings are sorted thematically and the “What’s new” page informs you of the latest happenings I am involved with.

The Artist’s hints’ page contains ideas and tricks of the trade accumulated from 40 years of my own practices and 25 years of art-teaching experiences. I intend to have frequent updates of this page so after your initial visit of the site you may care to come back from time to time.

Please contact me if you want to link up with my site.

So, what makes me tick?

Why do I paint?

It seems that I have been painting, drawing, cartooning or sketching all my life. My children grew up with the smell of turpentine in our house and they considered it quite natural. Their visiting friends did not.

So why do I paint? I believe that a degree of creativity is inherent in all of us; artists just happen to be lucky that their form of creativity is socially acceptable. Creative accountants usually end up in jail. Painting edit paper online is a glorious obsession. More than a few days away from my easel and I’ll become tetchy, irritable and frustrated. While I can speak and write reasonably well, to paint a picture takes communication to a different level.

So why do I paint?

I love it.

How do I paint?

My work is deliberate rather than impulsive; this is both by choice and by temperament.The conventional medical training I had predisposed me towards an organised scientific way of looking at the world. It is not surprising, therefore, that my methods lean towards the traditional Old Master techniques of sound drawing, monochrome underpainting and several layers of transparent glazes with opaque over- paintings.

Over the years I have experimented with many different mediums, starting with just linseed oil, which later I combined with a mixture of varnish and turps, one third of each. This still the simplest and safest medium a traditional painter could use. About 20 years ago I discovered Maroger medium which until recently was my standard medium. Unfortunately it has become too expensive and cumbersome to import it from the USA and I switched to Liquin gel, which works for me equally well.

The longer I paint the more I am convinced that the role mediums play in a painter’s technique is over emphasized.

This does not apply to brushes. I love brushes, the more the merrier, particularly the fine sables I can’t really afford, but can’t do without. I prefer boards to canvas, but I am not fanatical either way.

What do I paint?

As I work slowly my subject has to interest me sufficiently to maintain the necessary keenness for several weeks. Even so I work on several paintings simultaneously, preferably in different genres. A landscape, a still life, a portrait and an urban landscape with figures are good combinations.

What do I believe in?

I believe in lots of things and so do you, I am sure.

Obviously we all have our personal, religious, political, cultural and aesthetic views and that is fair enough. In a free society we are entitled to them.

But most of all I believe that an artist should have integrity to be honest to himself and others, then everything else will follow.

I cannot summarise it any better than the Bard of Avon did centuries ago:

“This above all: to thine own self be true…”