Back to the Studio - October 2025

For a number of years I have been creating paintings 'en plein air' - using the sort of observational skills that are fundamental to my practice as an artist. But recently I have been called back to an older practice of mine - that of responding to music in the studio.

As a classical violinist, music plays a big part in my life and I have always found it evokes mood in a particularly vivid way. But what has changed since my first experiments with responding to music is that now my plein air paintings are acting as source information for larger paintings.

Plein air painting tends to be a swift operation - trying to catch mood and detail quickly, whereas my studio practice is much slower. I leave paintings for a day or so before returning to them and spend much more time just looking at them.

I'm very excited about this development - where something that I have worked on outside provides subject matter and detail and the music provides a mood and emotion. I find that as long as I have painted outside initially, my body/mind remembers the mood of the place.

Last year I created a series of seascapes using this methodology - and all but one was sold in my Water Ways exhibition at Aleph Contemporary. They were inspired by my oil sketches from the west of Ireland from 2018, but the mood was enhanced by Sibelius - his 2nd and 4th symphonies and violin concerto

More work is developing now for my next solo show sometime in 2026

See you there!