Photograph by Mike Day

Painting, for me, is like wearing a glove - it fits perfectly.

I grew up painting as an escape. A part of life that was uncomplicated, dreamlike.  A passion that became a way of life - an essential way of life. I was lucky enough to grow up roaming the Lake District hills with my brother, my sister, my mum and my dad.  Hours of climbing, scrambling and walking, never really appreciating the splendour of what we were presented with, and yet years later I live and breathe these same images and experiences, only now through my painting and with my own children.

I like to explore many of the same themes and images, the tension between abstraction and representation, the duel between techniques and moods.

Colour plays the main role in what I create. A high or low perspective of densely knotted vegetation, a frantic pattern of grained wood or choking greenery that is so visually claustrophobic it has to be rescued by some sense of the landscape it lies in. I see it as bolts of illumination.

I find it hard to describe what I specifically want to convey through my work. They are made through feelings rather than words. If I was forced to sum up what I want to express, I would describe them as dreamlike and nostalgic yet contemporary. They speak of memories and the endurance of images. Atmospheric and melancholic, they are inconsequential moments that are highly charged.

As a landscape artist I endeavour to inspire and nurture our love of the natural world.

The Scottish Borders and south west Scotland is a wonderful place to live amongst a large community of artists.  The local area provides so many of the necessary elements for landscape paintings and this is reflected in the popularity of The Spring Fling, an annual event where local artists open their studios to the public in the last weekend of May.

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