La Fête Champêtre

La Fête Champêtre

This series of paintings takes its inspiration from the theme of la Fête Champêtre – a pastoral festival, or picnic in the park. Eighteenth century French artist Antoine Watteau reflected on this theme, depicting men and women in elegant costumes eating and dancing in...
Roman fresco course in Sardinia

Roman fresco course in Sardinia

Last month I spent a week at Bosa Art School in Sardinia with Carey Mortimer. We are both ridiculously interested in the Roman fresco technique and decided to get together to develop a Roman fresco course to be launched next year in Bosa. The technique, as typified in...
Remembered Rooms

Remembered Rooms

I have painted a series of rooms remembered from my childhood – I lived in four different houses, each with a particular character which still invades my dreams. The paintings started out from a spark of memory, but soon developed into parallel places – rooms of...
Wall fresco part 3

Wall fresco part 3

Day three and four of painting and everything went to plan. I was starting to feel like real fresco painter, except for the fact I didn’t have assistants (or even slaves, as the Romans did).   As I went on, I found I could tackle larger areas, so decided to...
Wall fresco part two

Wall fresco part two

I decided to divide my fresco design into six giornate (painting days) as fresco has to be painted onto a damp plaster- and it dries quite quickly. I had already done a drawing of my garden and a quick colour sketch with egg tempera on gessoed paper, to get a feel for...
Wall fresco part one

Wall fresco part one

Having made dozens of portable frescoes on panels, I thought it was high time I tackled an actual wall. Fresco is, after all, a mural technique. Brick is the best and my studio building is made of brick. Unfortunately, it means working outside, which is not the best...