Medium
I trained as a portrait painter, with a particular focus on oil painting. Some of my work on this website is Oil on Canvas. However, more recently I have focused on Digital Painting by hand. This results in archival ink on canvas into which I hand paint with acrylic paint, as well as a series of hand knotted wool and silk tapestries. I also make available museum quality prints and can provide NFT’s of the original digital artwork.
Process
I approach this very much in the same way that I do an oil painting, building the image up in layers, scraping back and over-painting. Letting the image settle and coming back to work and rework again and again until the painting is concluded. As a process it is more engaging and focused on the process of creation. There is less time spent on the craft aspects of canvas preparation, paint mixing, cleaning and more time on the art. It is also kinder on the environment, many oil paint pigments and most thinners are poisonous and get out into the environment more generally as well as concentrating in the studio. From a personal perspective it also allows me to take my working space with me in a convenient and easy to access way, allowing me to sketch and paint whenever and wherever some particular piece of inspiration comes up.
Tapestries
I have a series of tapestries made from the digital originals. Each are made in the traditional Aubusson method. Hand knotted in New Zealand wool and Chinese silk by Hines of Oxford. The smaller items have approximately 200,000 knots, while the large ones approximately 2 million.
