Panoramic landscapes

Have just dropped off new work at The Frame Gallery, including some of the panoramic landscapes that I so love to paint. I find the proportions of these wide, shallow canvases work so well for certain landscape subjects, especially where I am seeking to draw the eye in at virtually ground level and then…on and on..into a distant horizon that seemingly merges with the sky, or when I’m bringing in an element of contrast as a backdrop, as with the almost blue-grey patchwork of fields that contrast with the light-filled hay bales that are the subject of  Hay Bales on Hillside above. These canvases make for an unusually proportioned painting – one which comes into its own once framed – and, on the right wall, they can look stunning. The first one that I ever painted many years ago (also of Hay on Hills) was purchased to go to a farmhouse in France, where it was to hang atop a long dresser in the dining room as a permanent reminder of the rolling English countryside back home!

The darker months can often smudge-out the far distant vista beneath a layer of cloud or rain but when light is cooperative, it does wonderful things with distance and striving to capturing the effect it has on distant fields or a copse of trees is one of the things that gives me more satisfaction that I can describe – which is why a summer of painting wouldn’t be complete for me without slipping in a few of the classic panoramas that make walking the English countryside such a joy. This painting, Towards Riseley, is of my very favourite views from the top of Farley Hill, Berkshire, close to my home (a spot where we routinely stop to lean on the gate and feast our eyes) and yet I could paint it again (and am quite sure I will!) in a different season – or in other light conditions – and it would look entirely different, which is the very diversity on offer to us in this life experience of ours that I seek to celebrate through my paintings. Our lives are littered with same ‘old’ views, reinvented daily!

Also on display at The Frame, a painting that was recently part of the Henley Art Trail and proved to be my most popular work in that exhibition –  Day’s Finale – capturing another classic moment, as the setting sun nestles in a corner of a field, setting adjacent trees alight in a moment of radiance.

From this weekend, you can see these paintings on display at The Frame Gallery, No.81 High Street, Odiham, Hampshire, RG29 1LB