I love the lack for colour in their scene

By focussing on the shapes, I’ve created a different view of Camden lock

Inside Westminster Abbey.

Selected for the Riverside Views exhibition in County Hall in September 2021.

Inspired by the geometric patterns and bright colours of Acoma pottery

This tower in the Olympic Park is impossible to draw! Hopefully, this captures its size and muscular structure

I’ve used inks to bring out the strong colours I saw.

A much drawn subject. I wanted to create a more abstract but still readable painting of it.

Looking through the arches towards the vast open square of Somerset House

pen and watercolour.

Inspired by David Hockney comparing single viewpoint (camera-like) with multi-viewpoint (life-like) images.

Watercolour. We've had our camellia on our balcony for 6 years now and it never disappoints!

Watercolour. Braving the cold outside on a cold January morning

We've spent many happy summers at Lower Mill Estate in the Cotswolds with our nephew and niece and their four children. This ink and pen drawing is of the biggest lake on the estate

Oil on canvas. Sometimes, an old work which didn't work offers an interesting palimpsest for new work. we'll see where this goes!

oil on canvas. Another view of the Lower Mill lake, this time based on a photo taken in the early evening with the sky just starting to turn pink.

Rob had this wonderful portrait of his dog on the wall behind him, half hidden by the reflections from the window opposite. The dog interrupted the sitting, so it seemed appropriate to include him! Rankin and Prof Green also had dogs that became part of the sitting. I did portraits of both of them, but I haven’t included them on the website, as they are not that good!!

Bernadine was a fabulous sitter. Duncan Shoosmith painted her and the conversation between them inspired me to read Bernadine’s Booker Prize winning book “Girl, Woman, Other”. A joyful book full of wonderful characters from all shades of the rainbow. Duncan gave me a gold star for this work, which pleased me!

I liked the way Noel set himself up for this sitting, with one of his paintings as a background. The shirt with the hearts is a favourite of his, apparently.

Interesting guy! This house he was in has been his home ever since he was born, and he intends to stay there for the rest of his life, it seems!

Akram was the first of the ten or so sitters. I didn’t like the idea of painting him just sitting there when, as a dancer, he creates such amazing shapes with his body. Rather cheekily, I drew this image of one of our house plants that seemed to me to create the flowing shapes I associate with Akram.

Katherine was one of the featured portraitists. I liked this image I caught of her from the screen, so I made a pencil sketch of her.

Clare is all about horses and dogs, which is great if you are fanatical about horses and dogs! She gives very little away about any ‘behind the scenes’ gossip, which is probably what makes her a well liked and trusted interviewer. Very discreet, very professional, slightly boring!

Noel Fielding was next up. A 'wild beast' of an amateur artists, I liked his crazy ideas, even though few really worked as finished pieces. My approach to the four hour sitting was to sketch in pencil for the first hour, then use this image as the basis for the iPad work.

Mary Beard was the last of the dozen sitters that Sky Arts organised for Portrait Artist of the Week. I’m not usually a fan, as I find her a bit preachy. However, I warmed to her in this sitting; she was open and friendly.

Thanks, Sky Arts, for a great way to help us artists through lockdown!

One of the earliest challenges on our Drawing London Zoom calls. I’m into my piano practice (Grade 3 presumptive!), so spend quite a lot of time in this corner.

My wife’s bathroom. I bought her the cacti and the little duck to brighten up a basically white bathroom. Interesting challenge to draw, but the Procreate tools helped.

One of the more difficult challenges set by a Drawing London member. A corner of our sunlit kitchen.

We wake up every morning to this view. I’ve drawn it in pencil, ink, oils and watercolour. This was the first time doing an iPad drawing of this view - St Saviours Church.

The little orchid was in full bloom - simple subject for trying out tools of Procreate

This Drawing London challenge was set a few months into lockdown - you get the mood! I’ve always wanted to paint our little ‘cabinet of curiosities’ and thought I would have some fun with this

Inspired by a Louis MacNeice poem

Selected by Nicola Green for the Discerning Eye 2015 exhibition. I spent a lot of time sketching surreptitiously on the tube!

Another view of the famous cycle race as it heads out along the Mall.

Inspired by the first visit of the Tour de France to London. I had a terrific viewpoint from the Victoria Memorial which inspired this painting

A typical city street in London

A small (23x23cm) sketch done on impulse, literally as I was walking past St Paul’s Cathedral.

Another small 23 cm square sketch in a smart white recessed frame! A lovely Christmas present for someone!

A quick pen sketch that captures the movement of one of these noble animals.

Done on the spot; a chilly day, I recall!

The St Pancras/ Kings Cross area of London continues to grow into the most exciting new urban district of London. This done before they started on the new Google Headquarters.

This was accepted for exhibition for the Sunday Times Watercolour Prize 2014 and exhibited in the Mall Galleries and elsewhere around the UK. I like the feeling of movement in the painting.

Done on the spot on the North side of the Thames.

One of my favourite coffee stops. A great place to people watch inside and outside as the crowds move along the Strand in London

Two of the most famous bridges in London - Lambeth Bridge in the foreground with Westminster bridge in the distance.

The Monument to the Great Fire of London in the foreground; Fish Hill runs down towards the River Thames in the City of London.

Watercolour. A difficult subject. To get the scale of it, I painted from the pontoon on the Thames.

Watercolour - viewed from the cafe in Riverside Studios.

I love the flags! Looking across the Mall from St James's Park

View taken from the amphitheatre balcony outside the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Looking back to old Hungerford bridge from the Thames Embanksment.

Spring time in St James's Park, sitting amongst the daffodils joggers and school children passing by.  A nice day out with Drawing London Group

In the centre of Hampstead, to the rear of Fenton House, is this wonderful house almost on its own down a small lane.

Following on from my exhibition in Burgh House in Hampstead, I was commissioned to do a painting by a couple of doctors who had got married there. They were living at the time in Belsize Village and wanted a view of this part of NW3 London. 

Another good day out with Drawing London Group.  Everyone knows about the changing guard at Buckingham palace, not so many know about the changing horse guard at horse guards parade at the other end of St James's Park

Most of my work around London is done in watercolour at the location.  This however was based on an aerial photo of Marylebone, an area of London I know well.

Friends of ours have a wonderful penthouse near the River Thames with a fantastic view of the London Eye.  They asked me to do a couple of paintings of the view and the street.

One winter morning, on volunteer duty at the top of Fenton House, I saw this wonderful misty distant view of the City of London.  I had to capture it in the few minutes I had available.   

The bridges over the River Thames make for wonderful subjects

Sometimes I dabble in pastel. Very satisfying if a little messy.  I hope the cleaners at the V&A have forgiven me for creating all that dust!

We lived here for 15 years.  Very central London!

I was selected as a 'wild card' entrant for the 2015 Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year.  We spent a day painting at Waddesdon Manor, the National Trust property in Buckinghamshire. I did this work 'en plain air' on Hampstead Heath as practice. The landscape is enlivened by a school party in their hi-viz jackets playing on the grass, and the 'Heath Hands' doing some tree work on the right.

oil on canvas

Graveyard scenes hover between landscape and urban.  Nunhead is so old and overgrown now that I think it qualifies as a landscape. Selected by Sacha Craddock for Discerning Eye 2016, this work was painted whilst sitting in the brambles and nettles of the much overgrown Nunhead Cemetery.

We were staying at the Lower Mill Estate with family enjoying a summer break in the Cotswolds. As the sun set, the lake we looked onto became calm and still, a perfect mirror for the sky lit up by the setting sun.

Visiting Giverny in May 2017, we came across La Roche Guyon. An impressive chateau, a wonderfully tranquil walk along the banks of the Seine, but best of all we discovered the restaurant Les Bords de Seine and had a fantastic lunch!

The red brick houses are part of the landscape of Hampstead Heath, framing the trees, the scrub, the grass and the water. 

The rear garden of the block of flats where I live rises steeply towards a jumble of shrubs and trees along the rear fence. The grass bank isn't usually this colour. An expanse of green can be boring so I wanted to use another way of hinting at the green grass without being literal. My approach was inspired by Richard Diebenkorn 's A Day At The Race 1953

Hayling Island - a holiday island with a long sandy beach connected to the mainland via a bridge across the mudflats of Chichester Harbour. I grew up here from the age of 10 until 15. The palimpsest is the bare canvas covered in my own thoughts and memories. The painting on top is of the mud flats and the bridge leading to Havant on the mainland.

We stayed at Moonfleet Manor, a friendly hotel on the banks of the Fleet, the lagoon enclosed from the sea by the Chesil Bank. The ever changing light of this serene view fascinated me, reminding me of Andreas Gursky's The Rhine .

Almost a portrait (of a tree!). I was walking with my watercolours looking for a scene to paint and I was inspired by one of the amazing trees on Hampstead Heath. Sketching it in its quiet glade was a meditative moment, hence the title. Do trees also suffer from Alzheimers?

The Baie de Somme is a vast open area, all sky and sea and, at low tide, sandbanks. The town of St Valery has a long riverside walk. All this is in contrast to the claustrophobic WW1 images that the word 'Somme' conjures up. 

I find this piece has a certain quality of emptiness that grabs me every time I see it.  It's not a negative feeling; not an empty loneliness, more a state of meditation. If my records are correct, this was my submission to Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year 2015.  I wasn't selected as a main entrant, but did get a wild card place at Waddesdon Manor.

This work was completed in 2015. The image is from my head, not of any scene. Imagine my surprise when I arrived at Lands End one early evening in 2019 to see exactly this view. The steady Atlantic swell, the clouds hiding the sun, the light bouncing off the water.

Very good friends organised a great lunch party of all their family and friends to celebrate his birthday. Three weeks later she died of the cancer that they both knew was terminal. I saw two figures standing at a fork in the path outside Kenwood House, and it reminded me of them, and how they bravely and thoughtfully planned for the inevitable. 

As the train approached Narbonne, I captured a quick snap of this derelict shed in the middle of a new marina development. It had such character that I had to paint it.  More of a portrait, I guess, but also elements of an urban landscape.

The weather turned suddenly warm, bringing out a haze of blossom across the treetops.  A man was walking his dog across the grass.  I quickly sketched the scene in oils

Whilst my parents were alive, I drove many times from London to Chepstow along the M4.  That route is etched on my mind!

My first day as Honorary Steward at Westminster Abbey and I had this amazing view. The choir’s voices soared up into the vaulting high above. It was mesmerising. I couldn't sketch or take photos so had to work from memory and whatever other sources I had to hand!

Ostuni is a town in Puglia, Southern Italy. It glimmers with white paint ever since the mayor decided everyone should whitewash the town walls once a year. You walk around in the hot sun and glance down an alleyway where your eye is caught by a splash of colour - laundry day!

A day down by the river at Greenwich with Drawing London. I walked along to the old Maze Hill power station. Loved the pattern of shadows playing over the massive structure. Used my sketches and photos to produce this final version in oils.

The classic image. So simple yet so effective if you attend closely to the edges of the petals. The vase has an elaborate blue and white Chinese design which I deliberately blurred as I wanted the flower heads to be the main centre of attention

It is only from the top deck of the 55 or 243 bus that you get this view as you cross over the tracks in Clerkenwell. I’ve seen it, photographed it and sketched it many times, and finally produced an oil painting of the scene with the sun setting behind St Pauls

I swim once a week at the Kentish Town pools. Can’t take my paints in there, or even a sketch book, so this is very much an impression of being there in the water.

You don’t immediately think of Bedfordshire as a place to find riverside tranquility, but here, the Ouse meanders through the trees, weirs and sauces control the water flow making for ideal areas for boating, fishing or just meandering along the riverbank.

I was intrigued by the patterns woven into Chinese silk garments on display at the V&A and wanted to put these together in a painting.  What evolved was a segment of Hayling Island/Langstone Harbour mud flats tumbling over a classic Chinese ladder-like wallpaper/floortile pattern.  The sea is washing in from one side, and to the top right, across the 'Chinese ladder' is the sky with stylised dark and lighter clouds and the sun peeping through.

We have spent our last three summer holidays at Lower Mill estate in the Cotswolds. A great place for a three generation family holiday. Swimming, biking, canoeing, tennis, football etc etc. All in the tranquil surrounds of these lakes formed by old gravel pits. As the sun goes down, the reflections in the water are lovely.

A day down by the river at Greenwich with Drawing London. I walked along to the old Maze Hill power station. Loved the pattern of shadows playing over the massive structure. Used my sketches and photos to produce this final version in oils.

I had my studio refurbished at the end of last year (2018). Very pleased with the results - lots of storage space, but it is so smart! Took me a good few weeks to get back into painting there! This was the first painting I did

Lovely day out to Cliveden. A steep walk down to the river Thames, so took advantage of a vacant bench to sit and paint.

In the bright sun of the island of Malta the narrow streets of the old main town M'dina are deep in shadow. The ancient walls of the buildings carry the evidence of layers of changes and additions over the years.

My friend Paul Lau has an office on the Kings Road with a lovely terrace facing the sunset. He asked me to paint the view for him.

By Hampstead Heath Overground station, there is a path that leads up onto Hampstead Heath. The path is framed by trees which must be nearly 200 years old. Locals call it the ‘Tree Cathedral’

The Drawing London Group was due to meet in Islington, but with the temperatures around 35C and thunderstorms threatened, they wisely decided to postpone the outing. As I had a spare day, I took myself off to Hampstead Heath, found myself a large shady tree to sit under, and painted this picture.

Selected by Celia Imrie for Discerning Eye 2016, this is two abstract 20x20cm canvas boards mounted on a 50x40cm sheet of aluminium lightly glazed with a sheen of oil paint.

Proud Grandpa gurning down on frightened baby! Put this in for the Ruth Borchard portrait award, but not selected.

The rear garden of the block of flats where I live rises steeply towards a jumble of shrubs and trees along the rear fence. The grass bank isn't usually this green, but I was inspired by a Richard Diebenkorn painting called A Day At The Race 1953

We stayed at Moonfleet Manor, a friendly hotel on the banks of the Fleet, the lagoon enclosed from the sea by the Chesil Bank. The ever changing light of this serene view fascinated me, reminding me of Andreas Gursky's The Rhine .

My studio looks out over the back gardens towards one of the Chalcot blocks of flats. The sun sets spectacularly behind this tall block. Recent events at Grenfell Tower seem to give this quick sketch a new depth of meaning.

Selected by Sacha Craddock for Discerning Eye 2016, this work was painted whilst sitting in the brambles and nettles of the much overgrown Nunhead Cemetery. 

Inspired by one of the amazing trees on Hampstead Heath. Sketching it in its quiet glade was a meditative moment, hence the title. Do trees also suffer from Alzheimers?

Exhibited at the Drawing London 'Art of Friendship' exhibition at the Street Gallery in UCLH in London

The Bare de Somme is a vast open area, all sky and sea and, at low tide, sandbanks. The town of St Valery has a long riverside walk. All this is in contrast to the claustrophobic WW1 images that the word 'Somme' conjures up. 

On a visit to Murano, I was enchanted by the old mosaic floor of the church of Santa Maria e San Donato. The images stayed in my mind for a long time and inspired this collage of watercolour designs.

There are wonderful lunchtime concerts performed by the amazing students at the Royal Academy of Music.  This seeks to capture the impression left on my mind by one of these concerts.

A collection of shapes built up from life drawings collected over a couple of years of drawing with the Hesketh Hubbard society 

Layers of paint overlaid onto prepared aluminium, this pattern of abstract blocks has resolved itself into the bare interior of a shed with a window looking out onto dense greenery.

Inspired by the Rachmaninov song 'Morning' (text by M L Yanov).  The words describe the mist rising from the dewey grass as the sun rises "like a girl's tears drying as her lover appears".  

Nationhood seems to be breaking down. This 50x50cm painting shows a random selection of national flags with part of their design dissolving into the blue sky of the background

The initial drawing was done whilst watching the Royal Ballet dance "Four Temperaments" to the music by Hindermith. The colour was added later to draw together the different shapes across the page.

This was selected by the Sunday Times Watercolour competition in 2015 and exhibited around the country. There is no underlying message here - I just liked the juxtaposition of the colours of the flags and the upright flagpoles.

I played mourned with various shades of raw umber on 20x20cm panels, then arranged them in a 3 by 3 panel pattern on a raw stretched canvas. 

I was selected as a 'wild card' entrant for the 2015 Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year.  We spent a day painting at Waddesdon Manor, the National Trust property in Buckinghamshire. I did this work 'en plain air' on Hampstead Heath as practice.

I constructed this work by first analysing the colours of all the flags of the world.  I then apportioned them according to the amount of colour in the flag multiplied up by the countries population. Each dot represents around 20m people, and there are over 3000 dots. Red predominates!!

During one of the terror attacks in Paris, one gunman was trapped inside a delicatessen. The police exploded a stun grenade as they stormed the building. The moment of the explosion was capture in a photo that was in all the papers.  This painting captures the essence of that moment.  

It was the philosopher Heraclitus who said 'You can never step into the same river twice".  This scene, incorporating old Tudor jetty works, Victorian warehouses, and modern office blocks seen in a view across the Thames in London exemplifies this.

This painting grew from an abstract piece that I had worked on for some time when I happened to see an old photograph of a dancer in this pose that fitted exactly into the abstract shapes on the canvas.

This large (80x60cm) work is inspired by the book "Levels of Life" by Julian Barnes.  It is a three part book, and in the first part, which is about falling in love, he describes the early history of ballooning. There is a quote from the first man to ascend in a hydrogen balloon, Dr J A C Charles "When I felt myself escaping from earth my reaction was not pleasure but happiness. I could hear myself living"

Selected by Nicola Green for Discerning Eye 2014. After lots of sketching on the London Underground, I put together this image to convey the sense of what it is like to commute on the crowded tube.

Inspired by the bustle of the City of London and its long history.  Traces of tall ship masts with shouts and noise of commerce rising above them. 

This is the main (Minton) staircase for the original part of the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) designed by Henry Cole. His commemorative plaque is on the right. The staircase is brightly coloured and patterned with Minton tilework.  I used ink and wash to convey to 'see' this in their mind's eye.

Wonderful view of the skyline from our hotel on the south side of the Arno.

View of the Imperial War Museum designed to evoke a sense of fading imperial power.

Patrick Heron is one of my main inspirations.  This iPad drawing is based on one of his works.

Taken from the reflection in the front windscreen of the bus as it passes St Martin in the Fields in Central London. 

Exhibited in Bankside Gallery in 2010 as part of the celebration of the opening of the new Blackfriars station.

View taken from the amphitheatre balcony outside the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden