Portraits

Portrait painting first started for me with a week-end class run by a great artist, Phil Tyler.

During coronavirus lockdown the Sky Arts Team encouraged artists to paint celebrity sitters who were being painted by previous winners, and finalists from Sky Artist of the Year via facebook live. Sunday mornings became more tolerable and gave me plenty of practice, and the confidence to even paint my mother.

Currently I am part way through a portrait of my postman as a thank you gift for working throughout lockdown.

Pop Art

I'm a big fan of pop art 'Happy Cat' and 'Just a Button' are my versions.

Happy Cat is a large painting of a very small, cheap pot cat that as young children we gave my mother for mothers day. More than sixty years later she still has the cat standing on her window sill.

The Just a Button was painted during my second year of a fine art degree at the University of Chichester, and is just a small coat button. The button became part of my catalogued found items from the streets and beaches of East Sussex.

Birds

I have only painted seagulls as there are so many where I live. Seagulls have real character, and as one comes to my studio window, it felt right to have a go at painting him. The names believe it or not are from my family tree.

My next bird painting is likely to be a crow as one keeps hanging around at the basement of a house opposite and intrigues me.