It started with the weather images. Today I take them with a sophisticated digital camera (so far 3,600 images) but I started them in pre-digital times as small gouache paintings done very quickly and very small from my back doorstep in Lancashire. There I delighted in watching the light and weather work their way along t’ tops of t’ moors across the valley, a valley from which the wind brought the smell of wallpaper paste from the t’ mill producing your ready pasted wallpapers.
Studio ponderwall 1976
Now the mages are looking at the Downs, the air full of the scent of the sea and the plants across my garden. Then the sketches were put onto the wall in my tiny studio, now the photo’s go to the web (see them daily on X, Facebook and occasionally on the BBC Weather Watchers) until they are developed as part of my development of ideas/thinking when they are made in ‘wet paint’ rather than just digital.
Ponderwall 2018
The photo images are printed out and supplemented by drawings in a variety of note and sketch books and then onto larger sheets. The images are manifested and taken down to the studio where they are taken forward, drawn/collaged into making paintings. One wall is bits and bobs of the photographs, the second is the working wall I paint against, a third I call it my ‘ponderwall’, a part of the studio where current painterly concerns in wet paint are put to be pondered, mulled over, allowed to develop, the thinking being realised in larger canvases, creating a mental ‘end of paragraph’ and creating the space for the obsessions/concerns to be worked on through new pieces.
Ponderwall 2021
Unfortunately none of the small gouache sketches survived my moves from house to house, whilst the larger works on paper, now rather more formalised than the simple wash sketches of the Darwen Moors, are exhibited, sold, stored, having fulfilled there most important role as my ‘ponderwall’, becoming a changing record of my creative thinking. The weather remains a constant and the constituent parts of my environment are the ‘carriers’ of my painting, the messages honed using the ‘ponderwall’ and an almost continuous stream of works.
Ponderwall 2023
Initially the works on paper were abstractions, almost becoming completely abstract, but now they are rooted in observation, and my paintings continue to be a reaction to my reality. The ponderwall enables me to scan and note the development of what works and what doesn’t. It’s as if it is my own personal constantly updated temporary gallery. The wall also carries my lessons learned as I push my boundaries in I how I use colour and make marks. I reference it as I continue working, replacing individual pieces as new work meets my approval.
Ponderwall 2024
This is a selection of my stored images of the wall, which is photographed as it changes. The photographic record showing the progress over the last few years. When I started with the images of the Darwen Moors I had no driving licence nor car, my horizon was the moors to be walked and explored visually. Now I am old, less mobile, my horizon doesn’t seem that different, though now the skyline is the Downs and Seaford Head, a shore to be walked and explored visually rather than moorland.
Early 2025
I spent many years writing about hotels, visiting35 countries, exploring and photographing landscapes in Africa, the US as well as continental Europe in my travels, but nothing is more important to me than ‘hearth and home’. Probably at least in part because of my peripatetic upbringing as a Service child, moving every three years, made me yearn for the roots others are not even conscious they have
As has ben said many times before, this is a world of wonder, but we need to train our eyes to see, our minds to appreciate. It is part of the function of the artist to encourage this visual and mental curiosity, and then to appreciate the beauty around us.- the wall now is back with the garden
Have you looked into a flower today, to see a universe?
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