The Biggest Paintings of My Life
Over the summer, I made one of the biggest paintings of my life. Late Summer East Head measures 100 x 153cm, and it sits alongside two more large works that I'm prouder of than almost anything I've made.
There was a time when a massive canvas intimidated me. All that white space, all that surface to hold together. Now I look at a big canvas and think: I cannot wait. After thirty years of experimenting with paint, I finally feel ready to bring everything I know to a scale that matches the landscapes I love.
Go Big. Why Not?
One of my tutors, the painter Ian McKeever, had a simple message for us as students: go big. Blow it up. Why not?
It took me years to fully understand what he meant. Scale isn't about showing off. When you blow a painting up, its impact grows with it. A small painting invites you to look. A big painting surrounds you, and ultimately my work is meant to be felt, not just seen.
That lesson has stayed with me throughout my career, and this month it finally came into its own.
Sustaining Movement Across a Vast Surface
Working at this scale was a real challenge. On a small canvas, a single gesture can carry a whole painting. On a big one, you have a very large area to cover, and every part of it has to hold its own.
The question I kept asking was: how do you create depth, movement and drama without the painting becoming static? I had to really push what my mediums were doing to capture atmosphere and distance: clouds moving on a bigger scale, the sense of the sea stretching away from you, the light shifting across the water.
With Late Summer East Head, I wanted serenity and peace, but not stillness. Sustaining that energy across the whole surface took everything I've learned about layering and experimenting with paint.
A Season of Blues
I'm loving the blues at the moment. Through late summer and into autumn, this coast gives us the most beautiful range of them, and I've been leaning into every one: duck egg, cerulean, cobalt, ultramarine, and the turquoises I've been enjoying so much.
On a large canvas, a good range of blues does a lot of work. It carries the eye into the distance, separates sky from sea, and holds the atmosphere together across the whole painting.
Paintings You Can Sit In
What makes these three paintings special to me is that they bring everything together: impact, development, technical ambition, and above all a real sense of place.
They're paintings you can sit in. You can absorb them and feel that moment: the energy of the sea, the movement of the clouds, the tide coming in and going out, the light moving across the water. All of it without depicting too much detail, so there's room for your own memories of the coast to come in.
Texture and layering at this scale are something a screen can't fully show. If you'd like to see these paintings up close, I'd love to welcome you to my studio for an unhurried, one-to-one visit. Get in touch to arrange a time.