This is my latest series ‘Understories: Things Fallen’ and ‘Understories: Tidescapes’

My latest series ‘Understories’ is the culmination of nearly ten years work pushing the boundaries of the accepted use of the medium of oil paint on canvas.
Oil is traditionally considered an ‘opaque’ medium , one that facilitates limitless overpainting and corrections. A subject is worked from dark to lightest highlights. Instead,I have used watercolour process using transparent oil glazes and worked from light to dark, using the ground of the canvas as my only light source. There is no white paint used, no over correcting.
After researching the effects of cotton duck and Russian linen, I have finally settled on poly cotton canvas for this work because of its ultra smoothness and brilliant white surface.
I dilute high quality oil pigments to produce an intense luminosity that is reminiscent of the glow of watercolour but has the stability and power of oils.
These processes borrow from Renaissance techniques, updated by the latest in paint, medium and canvas technology.
The benefits of this method of working have meant I can return to a cherished subject of the examination of the eternal cycle of decay and dissolution of the environment, whether in the forest, a garden or along the shoreline.
These works can be considered to be part of a pantheon of environmental paintings that seek to inform but also focus on the abstract form of dissolution, but these works exist in a context of their own both in approach to subject matter and manipulation of medium.
Though the subject matter ranges widely from coastal, to forest to garden or historic site, I am replicating pattern and forms by isolating fragments from the distraction of a wider field.