A New Start

In 1995 my school reorganised and I had the opportunity to take early retirement. After about a micro-second's consideration, I accepted. Now I had the chance to spend more time on my painting and to exhibit more widely. I arranged a one-man show 'Spirit of Place' at Lotherton Hall, near Leeds (21), for 1996 and also set up a two-person exhibition at the Manor House, Ilkley with sculptor Dionne Hood. This last was particularly useful as it enabled me to group together in one place the work I'd produced over many years; this was a rare opportunity to see a complete phase of my development as an entity. Looking back, it was both the culmination and the ending of that phase of my work which had started at Bretton Hall and developed through the MA at Leeds. (Later work was to be less self-consciously theoretically-based and more directly responsive to experience.)

My interest in architecture in its own right also found sources of inspiration on visits to Provence and Venice (22,23,24). I have plans to return to Venice one day in order to spend more time exploring its possibilities.

Two or three years later Sheila gave up her part-time job as a hotel florist in York so that we could realise our long-held ambition of walking from Land's End to John o'Groats; in 1997 we backpacked our way north, covering 1200 miles in 88 days and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Sheila discovered she had an aptitude for writing walking books and devised Lady Anne's Way, the now classic 100 mile walk from Skipton to Penrith which links together Lady Anne Clifford's castles and passes through some of the most beautiful scenery in the country. More recently Mini Treks in the North Pennines was published - a series of two-day walks in England's 'last wilderness' as it is often described. (Some of the original drawings I made to illustrate the books can be seen in the Black and White category of the Pictures section.) She is working on a third book even as you read this.

Soon after that we sold our Brayton home and moved here to Giggleswick in the Yorkshire Dales National Park where we overlook the old village and its churchyard. Once more we have a garden large enough to satisfy Sheila's needs as a flower arranger and plantswoman while also allowing us to grow our own vegetables again.

As we are on the edge of the Three Peaks country we naturally do most of our walking in the area. It goes without saying that we've both really fallen in love with it. The views from the summits of Ingleborough, Whernside and Penyghent are something to behold, while even the humbler tops a few minutes walk from the house can boast panoramas of superlative beauty.

Needless to say, this is influencing my work enormously. I do most of my painting in the autumn and winter (the summer months are spent doing practical jobs around the house and garden) although our walking expeditions provide opportunities for photographs and sketching throughout the year - gathering material, in fact. The result is painting which now concentrates on my personal day-to-day experience of this landscape.

At first it all seemed a bit overwhelming - there is so much here it's easy to be swept along by the intrinsic beauty of the place. Now, however, I find I'm beginning to focus on particular places and experiences and I return to them repeatedly - for example, the view from Giggleswick Scar down Ribblesdale to Pendle Hill (26), the prospect from any of the Three Peaks, and Ruskin's View at Kirkby Lonsdale (27); this last in particular echoes my interest in the historical base of our landscape perceptions. The very latest work is more concerned with the atmospheric and textural qualities of the scene - but enough of this! The paintings can speak for themselves.