My Art

I consider myself very much an amateur seascape artist with a lesser interest in figure and portraiture painting. I am developing my skills under the instruction and mentoring of the brilliant and talented artist Jimmy Johns who runs a drop-in workshop each Sunday afternoon in Writtle.

This is a photo of large  oil colour painting on canvas I completed in March 2011. It shows the early morning dawn with a moderate to fresh South Westerly wind developing (thus the red sky in the morning sailor's warning).

The first picture is of the Chicken Rock lighthouse, erected on a reef that is covered at high tide off the South of the Isle of Man and, exposed to the full might of the sea. ( Which I have tried to convey in the picture) It was an elegant structure when it was established in 1875 and designed by the famous Stephenson family of lighthouse engineers. Unfortunately it  was gutted by fire in the 1960s( I recall that it was in December) and is now replaced with another on the Calf of Man.

A school friend of mine, Mike,  told how his dad had the job of re-glazing a window on the lighthouse when it was operational, a days work normally. He was safely landed and got on with his work but unfortunately the weather quickly deteriorated  and he couldn't be taken off that day; he was there for three days!




Chicken rock lighthouse off the Calf of Man

The following pictures have the reflection of the flash photography in the glass as they are framed. Sorry about that but I couldn't be bothered to take them out of the frames.

The second picture also painted this year  is a watercolour of a North Norfolk beach where we like to holiday with the grand kids. The aim here was to try and capture the sea, the shadows and reflections on the wet sand. My wife likes this picture and despite having had several enquiries about selling it refuses to do so !

A watercolour beach scene,  Brancaster I think.

This picture  although another beach scene (I have done several) was set by  Joy Stone RCA who asked me to have a go painting more distant objects to give my pictures more atmosphere.

Watercolour: North Norfolk beach scene

This watercolour scene was painted at some favourite saltings that I normally stop at if  sailing the dinghy  in high winds and need to sail in sheltered water. It is normally a coffee stop.

River Crouch at Watery Lane

The next picture was my first attempt in acrylics and was a request from my daughter Liz who had fond memories of the lighthouse. (The lighthouse looks bent in this photo but it isn't in the actual picture!)

One holiday we stayed at this lighthouse, which is in the North of the Isle of Man.  In beautiful weather the fog horn suddenly activated ( it was thought to be bird droppings on the sensor at the top of the light). The noise woke us up but wasn't too bad in the building. however, it was really loud outside so we went off to sight see at the other end of the Island! When we came back there had been a number of complaints from locals  and an engineer had been summoned to fly over from Glasgow. We offered the guy a cup of tea and once he had fixed the problem took us up on our offer of tea and slice of  cake. In return he took us up to the light which was normally locked off and let us look at the stunning views.

T

Point of Ayre lighthouse

The next watercolour picture is of an old rusty anchor just by the West Mersea public slipway that appealed to me

Finally another watercolour scene at the entrance to our yacht club, painted this year from a photo I took when we had the 'big snow'

My latest picture is an oil painting of beach huts on the North Norfok Coast, which was sketched when we were on holiday there this summer.Then after photos were taken, the composition was arranged to make the picture more interesting and to improve the weather, which was not sunny as in the picture. The dimensions are  about three and a half feet long by about two feet high, so a fairly large canvas.

Beach huts