PROTEAS ON THE PATHWAY
(5 ink and wash paintings on 250 gram Fabriano watercolour paper, 76cm by 56 cm.)
Proteas on the Pathway, is an attempt to look at the landscape close-up, render its textures underfoot and close overhead, as I endlessly trample the mountain pathways and tracks in this place of untrammelled wilderness. These are akin to an attempt to form a type of script or mark-making to encrypt an alphabet about this quite extraordinary place.
BLUE DELFT. LANDSCAPES FROM CEDAR PEAK, HERMANUS AND CHURCH HAVEN, 2025
9 ink and wash paintings on 250 gram Fabriano watercolour paper, 76cm by 56 cm.
In early 2025 I was painting in the landscape again on the farm Cedar Peak, nestled in the Cederberg Mountains in South Africa. I found a way of tying the landscape into a South African historical timeline by introducing the colour blue. I call it a Delft blue because it reminds me of the colour used on Delft porcelain. It also reminds me of the blue found on old Chinese porcelain.
From around the middle of the seventeenth century South Africa, the Cape of Good Hope, primarily, was settled by Europeans, and became useful to the Dutch as a half-way refuelling station for their Dutch East India Company (The DOC). This company, trading between Asia and Europe, brought quantities of goods including blue and white Chinese plate to Europe (and to the Dutch settlers at the Cape). Amongst these settlers were my ancestors, and blue and white china from China, painted with exotic and far-away landscapes has been a feature of my life since childhood. The early Europeans were the first foreigners to see and settle in the remote and still-wild Cederberg mountains and valleys. Their legacy is deeply embedded. There is a sense of patina and history and palimpsest in this set of five blue and white paintings, referencing the fact that this place too, was once an exotic and far-away landscape for the then newcomers who settled.
I continued to work in blue ink for these landscapes rendered in Church Haven, on the West Coast in South Africa, and in Hermanus on the East Coast.
SCRIPTORIUM.
Oils on canvas, 92cm by 73cm August 2025.
There are three paintings in this series, forming a triptych. The triptych is the first clue that there is a spiritual component to the work. In addition there is a veering towards the creation of a border such as might be found in an illuminated manuscript of the sort painstakingly written and painted by Medieval monks in a room known as a Scriptorium, the title of this work. The work is a celebration and holy contemplation upon the elements creating the conditions of life itself - chiefly sunlight and water.
MY YELLOW GARDEN
Oils on canvas, 50cm by 50cm. July 2025.
These are summer paintings, capturing the sunlight, water, and lush plant growth, a sense of summertime magic
A RIVER RUNS THROUGH
Oils on canvas. 92cm by 73cm, 30cm by 40cm and six small canvas boards 30cm by 30 cm. August 2025.
This single large canvas and six small studies attempt to encode a spirit of place, the place where I live on the edge of the river Seine, in Hericy. I say attempts because the river never stands still, embodying a sense that it can never be ‘written’ down, or transcribed (bearing a relation to the Scriptorium paintings and the idea of a Scriptorium where holy manuscripts are transcribed.). It is a painting about flux and the passing of time.
BLACK SUNFLOWERS.
Ink, wash and pastel on Clairefontein 300 gram watercolour paper., 50cm by 75cm. A set of 6 images. January 2025.
These blackened sunflower heads are images of seasonal death within the cosmic tides of the circling seasons. The sunflowers are seen as clocks. The mesmerising geometries of sunflower faces link these flowers into dialogues with sacred geometries and the manner in which life builds forms.
CALENDAR OF LEAVES.
Ink, wash and pastel on Clairefontein 300 gram watercolour paper., 50cm by 75cm. A set of 12 images. December/January 2025.
The hierarchic leaves, so much larger than life, allow each leaf to become a little seasonal world, each representing a month of the year. starting January and ending December.
ZUCCHINI FLOWERS
Oils on canvas, Varied sizes - 30cm by 30cm and 21cm by 30 cm. A set of 15 paintings. August 2025.
The Zucchini Flowers in my vegetable garden were especially profuse this year. Working loosely and rapidly there is an attempt to capture their rapid growth and the brief nature of their exquisite flowering in the heady heat of mid-summer
FONTAINEBLEAU FOREST
Oils on canvas, 30cm by 30cm. A set of four paintings. July 2024
. I love to walk in the nearby forests, absorbing the atmosphere and magic stillness of the place
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ON THE BANKS OF THE SEINE
Oils on canvas. A set of three paintings. August 2024.
Living on the edge of the river Seine, I love to watch the quality of light on the surface of the water and engulfing the bank-side trees. It is particularly luminous in late summer, when these paintings were made.
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CLAUDIA’S GARDEN
A series of eight small oil paintings, 30cmx30cm. A weekend spent in early summer 2025 in Claudia’s breathtaking French garden led to the the creation of this mosaic of intimate garden moments that celebrate the gardener’s cultivation of beauty within nature’s seasonal brevity.
BOOTHBAY
Oils on canvas. A set of ten paintings.
I visited Booth Bay in Maine in the summer of 2024 and was inspired by the elemental coastal landscape of wide skies, cloud and water, the built landscape seemingly sparse.
HELEN’S GARDEN
Oils on canvas. 30cm by 30cm. A set of six paintings. Spring, 2024.
I visited my friend Helen a few months before she was to move home, leaving behind her prized and beautiful English garden, a narrow strip of land running down to a stream, meadows beyond. These paintings were done in the spirit of a farewell to the magic of the place.
AUTUMN LIGHT IN THE FOREST
Oils on canvas 30cm by 30cm. Autumn 2024. A set of four paintings.
These paintings, while lifting off from the experience of the light seen through forest trees, are becoming abstracts.
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My Summer On Canvas
Oils on canvas. A set of 9 paintings. 30cm by 30cm. July and August 2024.
These small paintings explore aspects of my summer garden
Cedar Peak Landscapes.
Black ink and wash on 300 g watercolor paper. Set of 12 images. December 2023–January 2024.
Study of my sister’s mountain farm in South Africa, using ink and wash to capture the sublime highland landscape.
2023
Church Haven Landscapes.
Black ink and wash on 300gram watercolour paper. A set of 12 images. (Click on top image). January and February 2024.
I again turned to ink and wash to attempt to capture the sublime qualities of water, air and mountains at the Church Haven lagoon in the Western Cape, South Africa.
2024
Lake Corrib Landscapes.
Black ink and wash on 300gram watercolour paper. A set of 20 images. (Click on top image). July and August 2023.
I first started to paint ink and wash landscapes inspired by a trip to Ireland. We rented a cottage on the edge of Lake Corrib and I loved looking out at the ever-changing moods and weather conditions of the lake, islands and boats and shorelines of the lake appearing and disappearing. It seemed like a transcendental, almost heavenly landscape.
2023
Skulls.
Oils on canvas. 30cm by 30cm. A set of six paintings. (Click on top image).
These six still lives, or Natura Morte, examine the skull as a symbol of life’s brevity. The skulls themselves begin to disintegrate, each painted as a little world. The worlds come and the worlds go.
2023
The Gaia Myth.
A Pattern Book 1 & 2.
Alladin’s Jar.
Blossom and Branch.
Collage.
Cross Angels.
2022
Bunnies.
The Fatima Series.
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From Music.
Line Drawings.
My Mother’s Garden.
The Composer’s Head.
Mallarme’s Apples.
The Fisher King.
The Books of Co-incidence.
Small Gardens.
Paradise Lost.
Still Life.