Retrospective Book
I crowdfunded this book in 2014 and it represents my artistic journey to that point.
Über Cornfield
Über Cornfield 500 x 700mmm Original watercolour £4,750 be larger) Painted in what I would describe as my go to palette, I use it when working out a very difficult problem as the results are so predictable. It’s basically yellow, blue and purple. So just a three wash Überpainting here. Three wash paintings although they look simple ironically are often the hardest paintings to design as there is simply less available options in terms of line and shadow to create the shapes. A three wash Überpainting will always have a simple composition, perhaps this is there appeal.
Stone River
Stone River Original watercolour 500 x 700mm 2013 £2,750 This is composition was a lengthy development, the idea was simple, the road to success not so. I continued to work my self into a corner, becoming either stuck or distracted so it was developed over a number of years finally completed in 2014. It was all about the first wash, in green, quite an extraordinary looking painting in it’s self. It’s unusual as it’s not a British image but based on something I had scene in Australia. The dead gum trees and the still slow river.
Mountain Corrie
Mountain Corrie Original watercolour 1,000 x 700mm 2011 £4,250 I could fill a whole book of my work with mountains and snow scenes. I have always drawn great pleasure from the use of all that blank white paper; it’s beautifully economic and forces that creative line even harder. In the Überpainting style the snow scenes tend to work with only three washes. Developing the line and contrast is hard work. The end result is always a very simple peaceful feel. Mountain corrie is unusual in its downhill perspective something I would like to use more often.
Uber Tracks
SOLD Über Tracks Original watercolour 1,000 x 700mm 2013 £4,750 So snow scenes really bring to the fore the use of the paper as the white paint. With watercolour it’s all about being able to see the paper underneath each wash. Too much, too heavy and I think the paper is killed and the painting is literally dead. These snow scenes also best illustrate that watercolour isn’t about what you put on it’s all about what is left behind; it’s a concept, a thought process, even a state of mind, it’s almost how I see.
Dead Elm
Dead Elm Original watercolour 1,000 x 700 2011 £4,750 As you can see it’s often the working title I stick with. The initial idea behind this painting would simply have been a dead elm tree. One of those statuesque corpses that litter the British landscape. I must be getting old as a lot of the original trees that died in the 1970’s are now falling down. Interestingly here is another good example of patterns in nature. The small stream, the flow of water, the repetition. The movement of the brush and my hand and arm are the consequence of the shapes drawn in the stream.
The Lake Side
49 The Lake Side Original watercolour 1,000 x 700mm 2012 £5,500 The idea behind my first project was to base the landscape work on the whole of the British Isles and in 2009 I put together a project called Uber Britain. A lot of this work forms the basis of that idea, although I imagine Über Britain and my love of our amazing and diverse landscape will be a life’s work.
The Yorkshire Dales
The Yorkshire Dales Original watercolour 1,000 x 700mm 2009 £4,750 An Überpainting is based on an imagined reality. This is a great example, it can only be the Yorkshire Dales, and it’s like a dream, a memory. It’s a great fusion of the natural landscape and agriculture past and present.
Highland Track
SOLD Highland Track Original watercolour 1,000 x 700mm 2011 £4,750 When I’m conceiving a design, the image starts as a recall of a memory. This is what an Überpainting represents not just to me but to you the viewer. It’s an enhanced ideal, a memory that we have all seen before, that sense of familiarity. The Über process is all about converting that memory into the finished painting. Sometimes the limitations of the medium mean that realising that is an impossibility, more often though through persistence it is eventually achievable. This was one of those paintings that took a while to come together. It was the use of pink as an unusual first wash that took the painting to a different level.
The Valley
The valley 1,000 x 700mm Original watercolour 2013 £4,750 I love to paint valleys, sometimes there is a pass, sometimes they are a dead end. Whatever they change from bottom to top. This was a fascinating painting to construct and very complex. The success here was all dependent on the final wash and executing it without error, it was a feat of practice and rehearsal. Watercolour leaves no room for error and must be applied fast and in this case in several places at once. When the last wash, pure is the sky colour went on the transition was astounding . Only watercolour can produce that almost instant magic.
The Harvest
The Harvest 1,000 x 700mm Original watercolour 2012 £4,750 Another key aspect of Überpainting and in many other aspects of my work is patterns, repetition and the effect on scale. Agriculture can create man made shapes that occasionally blend well with nature. A painting I’m yet to realise is an undulating hay field in an early August evening light. Sculptural perfection from a certain angle.
The Lake District
The Lake District 1,000 x 700 mm Original watercolour 2010 £4,750 Hexham is just over the Pennines from the Lake District and visit often, it’s a small pocket of magic landscape. To me this is Borrowdale on an early morning. I saw it once in late October with a heavy frost, the ground was blue and all the trees had the most amazing autumn colours, it simply didn’t look real, that’s one in the memory bank, next year maybe.
Uber Mediterranean
Über Mediterranean. 1,000 x 700mm Original watercolour 2013 £4,750 Transposing the Über technique away from British landscape has always been an ambition. I made a start here in 2012. The houses here created similar problems to the mushrooms on page 40. A house must look like a house, they are all essentially the same yet must all look individual. To paint this in 4 washes takes a bit of working out. Ultimately the options become multiple. It’s interesting how familiarity with a particular design can lead to genuine progress. The problem being that at this point I’m often ready to move onto a new subject.
Uber Pine
Über Pine 1,000 x 700mm Original watercolour 2011 £4,750 I’ve always favoured the pine wood as a subject, both the natural and agricultural. The challenge of the horizontal and vertical lines create a great technical challenge. There is again something about the patterns and shadows that fascinate me. Limitless combinations along exactly the same idea.
Über Beech
Über Beech 1,000 x 700 mm Original watercolour 2012 £4,250 A traditional British woodland is a magic place and something I’m very familiar with. A beech wood is a particular favourite. These paintings demonstrate the vital use of shadow in all Überpaintings. The shadows are used as a means of creating contrast and distinguish the shapes. Every line counts in an Überpainting. The painting on the left here is unusual as the first wash is multi coloured, obviously the effect on the subsequent washes is apparent throughout. A deviation from the Überpainting rules or a welcome addition?
Über Beech 2
Über Beech 2 1,000 x 700mm Original watercolour 2012 £4,250
East Anglia
East Anglia 1,000 x 700mm 2009 £5,500 Here is one of the first large scale Überpaintings from 2009. Coastlines as make fantastic subject matter for so many reasons. Here the vast tidal flats of the eastern lowlands where the sky is a mirror to the wet shoreline and sea, a blurred horizon, constant transition.
Low Tide
Low Tide 1,000 x 700mm Original watercolour 2012 £4,750 This is perhaps the best example of the repetition of pattern so far. It’s as if the clouds and the ripples in the sand created by the retreating tide seem to have even distorted the natural shape of the boat, almost surreal. What I did to achieve this was to embrace fully the natural scale of the movement of my hand and arm coupled with what was a large brush. I paint standing up; it’s a very physical process. This is a right handed painting, everything moving from top right to bottom left. It would be an advantage to learn to paint with my left hand too; it would open up options for me.
West coast 2
Über west Coast 1,000 x 700mm Original watercolour 2011 £4,750 As I have just mentioned the best Überpaintings are where the natural movement of the brush matches the shape of the subject. This seems to be most applicable to water, the path of least resistance I suppose. The crests of the sand dunes like a wave in themselves leading the eye through the sweep of the bay. Similar to the Beechwood painting on page 51 the first yellow wash rather than being flat has been graded so it becomes stronger towards the bottom of the painting. This gives the subtle graded effect on the mountains, the shape of which is made by the third heavy purple is a good example of watercolour being about not what paint is put on but what’s left behind.
P 55 Image 60 Uber Clouds
Über clouds 1,000 x 700mm Original watercolour 2012 £5,500 Every painting is the germ of a fleeting idea, a focus, and a first step. Here it was the change of light as the shadows of the fast moving clouds cling to the contours of the mountains in an ever changing dance of light and shade.
Mountain Yukon 1
SOLD Mountains Yukon 2001 Original watercolour 500 x 700mm £2,950 SOLD I’m unsure as to why watercolour and mountains work so well together. To me as with all my work it’s the capture of light, on rock on snow, grass an epic slope. I saw Mt McKinley in Alaska not that far (relatively) from where I painted this. I was 50 miles away and looking in completely the wrong place, I mistook the peak for a cloud, it was breathtakingly large. Mountains have a habit of putting us in our place, I love them.
Mountains Yukon 2
Mountains Yukon 2001 Original watercolour 500 x 700mm £2,950 SOLD It would be hard to have a retrospective without some mountain paintings. These were both painted in the Yukon in 2001, such a vast empty place. Simple tones, the snow highlights the structure, the skeleton of the mountain, ridges of rock like bones.
Seascape
Sailing Watercolour 500x 700mm £2,250 Watercolour is a simple medium in theory. I use the medium in a very stripped down manner. I use no white paint, no highlights, no masking agents, only the paper. With watercolour, you can only put a darker wash on a lighter one. Thinks through the implications of that simple statement for a moment.
Landscape
Landscape watercolour 500 x 700mm £2,750 SOLD I first painted in watercolour in 1989 and it was landscape and the paintings of Rowland Hilder that were my inspiration. I’ve painted landscape in many ways however here is what I would refer to as a traditional classic style. The influence and understanding of contrast tone and the colour mixing techniques are a huge influence. In contrast to my Überpaintings featured later these landscapes are dominated by the wet on wet painting technique.
Beechwood
Beechwood 500 x700mm Original watercolour 2014 £2,650 There are so many ways to apply paint. This is a tip toe around the edge of a form of pointillist painting. I’ve never quite managed to work it out with watercolour; once I do I think options will open up across a range of subjects. This woodland painting from 2014 is a step in the right direction.