Bluebells.

The bluebells were stunning this year. In Loftus woods, some trees have been cleared and the flowers bloomed in the increased sunlight. In between commissions, while waiting for new blank canvases to arrive, I walked in the woods and was drawn to paint them again.

Loftus Bluebell Woods Sunset, 2022. oil paint on deep edge canvas, 50x100cm (approx 20×40″).

Danby.

Danby Castle on the hillside, heather above.
Danby. oil on canvas. 50x100cm. Now in the private collection of N&L L.

Danby. A view across to Danby Castle, above the village. This landscape was just about dry enough to travel when it was put in the passenger seat of an open-top Lotus yesterday, on its way to its new home. My paintings are usually transported in a tricycle, this was so much more stylish! I needed a new laptop, so I had asked on Facebook if someone had a spare laptop in exchange for a painting… So I now have a brand new and very nice laptop, and this is the painting my patron chose in exchange. I am exceedingly grateful, for I have exceedingly kind patrons.

Danby Sunset is another painting started earlier this year and recently finished.

Danby Sunset, from Lodge Lane. oils on deep edge canvas. 20x50cm (8×20″). £425. Sold

Yesterday I was thinking back to where my current seashore paintings have evolved from. Of course, this beautiful North Yorkshire coast can only inspire…

I think of myself as facing North, twix land and sea.

On my back is the warm sunshine of yesteryears. Robin Hood’s Bay is my South, where so long ago I fell in love with that village and a beautiful man, though my roots originate much further South.

On my left are those awesome moors, clad in purple cloaks in Summer and a white mantle in Winter. There, is glory. And there, sweet sorrow buried on a hillside.

And on my right, the ebb and flow of the North Sea. Its gentle waves and fearful tempests, its constantly changing light, the chiming sound of waves over a shingle beach, those deep and rhythmic blues, the feel of soft sand, and those big skies…

I always go back to the sea… And today three beautiful women came to my studio. One, whom I hadn’t seen for about 40 years, bought “Mermaid”. Painted in 2012, soon after I moved back to the coast, it is very different from my current work. One, whom I didn’t know, bought “Runswick Bay”, unusually for me depicting the sea in winter. One, a close friend, had fallen in love with “Robin Hood’s Bay Rainbow” when I first showed it on Facebook. All three paintings are very different in approach, mood and scale, but I take it as a good omen for my current attraction/obsession/compulsion/fascination for the seashore, which I think many share.

Mermaid. Gouache on watercolour paper. 19x26cm. 2012. Sold.
Runswisck Bay. 20x20cm. oils on linen. 2018. Sold.
2019. Sold.