So, here I am, well and truly in my post Open College of the Arts (OCA) era. After several years doing firstly the drawing, then the painting courses, I decided to go my own way.

And on the first day after leaving OCA, and every day after that, there is the question ‘what to draw/paint/print today?’; self-determination is all very well, but when you do a course, you get used to following a curriculum, meeting objectives, choosing subjects, media and so on, all set or suggested by a third party somewhere for the benefit of your education, and at first I felt a little lost without it. Some guidance from somewhere on what to do next would be handy. It’s at this point the inner voice says, ‘you’re free, you can do whatever you want to now, using lessons learned and the wisdom given to you by those diligent OCA tutors’. Well, yes, there is that. And, of course,before OCA I did just that, or, at least, I think I did.

Over two years have passed by since I submitted my last assignment to my tutor and somehow, despite the lack of direction from a curriculum, I’ve managed to draw, paint and print, and would like to share some of this with you in the following posts: I hope you like them, reader.

As a life-long railway enthusiast, my paintings will include trains where I hope to express a feeling of the life and times and something of my lifetime affair with railways, particularly the steam engine. If, when you look at my train pictures it feels as if you’re there, that you can smell the coal smoke, the steam oil and feel the heat and sheer massiveness of these life-like machines, I will have succeeded in something. An adjunct to my love of  railways is a similar liking of model railways. I’ve always wanted to build, but have so far not, for a whole slew of reasons; but when I do I’d like it to be an artistic endeavour trying to express the same things as any painting I do.

And, talking of railways, here’s an oil of a typical semi-fast train on an evening or late afternoon sometime in the thirties at a station that resembles Grantham.

The surface is an oil canvas paper and is 40 x 26 cm.

A recent landscape:

Lower Shelton in the fog early one February day.  An oil on canvas 30 x 23 cm. This was so enjoyable to paint.