affordable art

In this website, I want to make my work accessible and available to as wide an audience as possible. The prices quoted under each image is the artist price. To keep costs to a minimum the preference is for work purchased from the site to be delivered mounted and ready to frame.

Works which are already framed will be clearly marked as such and there will be carriage costs added to the price.

Before buying I would recommend getting in touch by e-mail since there may be discounts for older work, for previous customers and of course other artists, friends, and family .

Since I live and work between two studios in the north and south of Scotland it will be possible to personally deliver work anywhere in Scotland at a small cost.

about the work

I work primarily in watercolour. I work directly and rapidly without any preparatory drawing. I usually work on two or three paintings of the same subject moving from one to the other and changing colour or brushes or using washout or resist techniques to provide a lively and transparent base. At this point each painting (of the same subject) follows a different path as I continue with inks, crayon, pigment, collage….whatever seems to me to work. At the end of this process I can have three, two, one ….or often no finished paintings . I keep everything, and often return to work previously discarded for inspiration or replication of some aspect missed at the initial completion. I love the fluidity and transparency of watercolour and am happy to let the medium lead me rather than exert too much control. I have divided the images on the site into six categories; flower paintings, still life, abstract landscape, traditional landscape, architectural landscape and figurative work. It may be helpful here to say something of each of these.

The flower paintings are made using a hake brush and a limited palette. While the process of painting is very rapid it is at the end of a meditative period of thinking about the particular essence of the flowers and of making passes with the empty brush over the paper so that I have rehearsed the choreography of the work before loading the brush. The paper is a hand made heavy hot pressed type. Many of my still life works include flowers but in these the simplicity of form is changed to link in to the complex patchwork surface and includes a range of media.

In the abstract landscapes I begin with some physical connection with the landscape and the paint surface, e.g. a rubbing from a celtic cross, a plasticine mould of a wall surface is used to print a mark on the paper or a bunch of heather used to beat or scratch the wet surface of the initial wash. Often these on-site works are used to inform subsequent studio work.

Alternatively the traditional landscapes are a simple response to the landscape before me albeit a rapid and spontaneous one.

In the architectural landscapes, I love the repetitive patterns of structural elevations whether of classical architecture or industrial sites and the way watercolour can render a power station or row of cottages into a melting fluid abstract surface.

The figurative work focuses exclusively on the male and is often a mix of religious iconography and homoerotic appeal.