So what about the cairns?

I was familiar with cairns since childhood, having noticed them while walking in Dartmoor National Park, in the south-west of England where I grew up. They represent a non-verbal but universal language, a detail of our shared human heritage. Cairns may be perceived at once as safety markers in the landscape, as collaborative sculptures and as messages of support between strangers. In recent work, cairns provide a subject for the visual exploration of common questions for the painter such as the character of shape and line, experiments with scale, opacity, and texture together with the eternal search for a harmony of colour and form.

Trees have always attracted me to look more closely at the negative shapes enclosed within, and groups of trees produce a pleasing repetition and rhythm, similar to the visual appeal of the cairns.

Winter is my preferred season because of the definition of bare trees, the effect of the sun low in the sky and the transforming cover of snow. I’m interested in the verticality of the landscape in this region - not simply the sheer height of the terrain but the variety of organic and man-made elements which, layer upon layer, construct the view from here.