Revisiting the familiar

Before the start of spring, while the trees were still bare, I took a trip to the South Pennine hills between Yorkshire and Lancashire. The wind and the rain restricted my activities a little. I came back footsore, with a very damp sketchbook and fewer photographs than I’d planned. But the visit helped recover my affection for and interest in this place, its moorland, valleys and streams I have known well. This landscape has been the subject of my artwork in recent years- up to the photo-etchings I made in 2019/20.

These photographs are now up on my studio wall, and I am now painting with the benefit of these and my sketches, the first of which I’ve included here.

Over Wadsworth Moor (2023) 41x30cm Oil on paper

Rippling outwards (2023) 41x30 cm Oil and acrylic on paper