"The Art chooses you when you're an artist." These words from my hero, Maggi Hambling, perfectly capture something I've been reflecting on recently—the profound relationship between mark-making, emotion, and the landscapes that call to me.
When Landscape Becomes Language
Standing on the shores of Mull or walking the familiar path around East Head, I experience something that goes far beyond the visual. It's a stirring that reaches what I can only describe as my soul—that moment when you think, "My God, the light's beautiful" These aren't simply lovely views; they're emotional spaces that have inspired me to paint for the past 30 years.
What fascinates me: how do we, as creators, transfer that soul-deep response from landscape to canvas? How do we ensure that a viewer, standing before our work, feels even a fraction of what we felt in that moment of inspiration?
The answer lies in our marks.
The Emotional Architecture of Paint
Every brushstroke, every layered texture, every deliberate choice in medium becomes part of an emotional architecture. In my studio, I'm constantly manipulating processes—layering oils with cold wax, introducing charcoal into wet paint, building surfaces that catch light in unexpected ways. This isn't technical showing-off; it's emotional necessity.
The way paint moves, resists, blends, or stands proud on the canvas—these aren't just visual effects, they're emotional translations of clouds, sand, season and ever-changing weather.
You can read more about my specific techniques and use of paint here, but what I want to focus on for this is why these techniques matter for both artist and viewer.
Being the Vessel
Hambling's observation that "art chooses you" speaks to something many artists recognise but rarely discuss: that sense of being a conduit rather than the creator. When I'm working on a piece, I often feel as though the painting is emerging through me rather than from me.
This isn't mystical nonsense—it's about getting our ego and preconceptions out of the way so that our emotional response to place can flow directly into our mark-making. Whether I'm capturing the dramatic interplay of light and water at East Head on a stormy morning, the more honestly we can translate our feelings into paint, the more likely we are to create work that resonates emotionally with others.
The Viewer's Journey
For a painting to have emotional impact, it must have significance for the viewer. This doesn't mean they need to have visited the same stretch of Scottish coastline or The Witterings. It means the marks on the canvas need to speak a universal language of feeling.
A bold, confident mark might convey the exhilaration of wind sweeping across West Wittering's open beach. When viewers encounter these marks, they don't just see technique—they feel the my response to the landscape, and hopefully, they're reminded of their own emotional connections to the natural world.
Sustaining Connection
During the recent Chichester Art Trail, I watched visitors engage with my work in ways that reminded me why I paint. The best moments weren't when someone admired a technical aspect, but when they simply stood quietly with a painting, clearly feeling something.
A painting should sustain you. You should be able to return to it again and again, discovering new emotional territories within familiar marks. This is what I strive for in every piece—not just to capture a place, but to create a space where viewers can have their own emotional encounter with the landscape.
The Continuing Conversation
This relationship between mark-making and emotional response is something I find endlessly fascinating, whether I'm working in my studio or discussing techniques or artist voice with students at Westbourne House School. Each coastline teaches us something new about how to translate feeling into form, how to make marks that matter.
The landscapes of the Highlands and this extraordinary stretch of West Sussex coast—from the protected wilderness of East Head to the ever-changing moods of the Witterings' beaches—they all demand different painterly responses. But the principle remains constant: our marks must carry our emotional truth if we want to create work that touches others.
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Missed me during the Art Trail? I'd love to welcome you into my studio to see my work up close. There's something about experiencing the texture and layering of paint in person that can’t be easily explained.