cloud paintings

The Pleasure is to Play
this cluster hung out over The North Sea, like molecules resting before they move on.
The title is a great quote from Lemmy, Motorhead.

For many years i have painted our beautiful, crisp, northeastern coastal skies, fully realising the luxury of being able to do so.
With The Pleasure is to Play, i will celebrate our open skies again, while so many cannot.

The Pleasure is to Play is the title piece of a not-for-profit, 5 painting, freestanding installation, that was intended for Queen Mary University London, Gozo, Malta campus.

The war for the time being has made this untenable.

Queen Mary University London stepped in and accepted the show on their mile end campus. 3RD-10TH JUNE EARLIER THIS SUMMER

The Pleasure is to Play, on tour, installed on Whitburn Cricket Club Village Ground

3rd-7thAugust also earlier this summer

frozen moments of fleeting clarity
st. Nicholas Cathedral Newcastle May 2019

A contemporary transient exhibition of our ever changing skies *within the permanent structure of the cathedral, holding the history and journey of its community in every stone.

ice cream

something to share

I saw this beautiful cumulus over Roker beach, a favourite place for ice cream

early evening horsetails

a fine teatime display outside my studio window

come on in i'm gonna teach ya how te swim

white plane trails cut through all clouds
the title comes from a favourite Alex Harvey lyric

so many moons we have seen stumbling back next to me

a great No Doubt lyric

long before i new him

thinking about my granda having a life long before me

paintings
vestiges of endlessly moving prospects

the title is an adaptation of Sir James Huttons' description of geological time, formed in the late 18th century, as he viewed the rock formations of Siccar Point Edinburgh;

'No vestige of a beginning....no prospect of an end.'

From the quick line drawings of our crisp north east coastal skies, as they form and disappear with their suggested
narrative,
the tonal tempera under painting on panel, used for its clarity luminosity and economy,

the sparse use of pigment with oil and dammar,
and the beeswax used to soften and unify the panel,

All have fleeting clarity, an always transitional, often illusory grasp of detail and focus.

cloud paintings