About

A unique perspective on the English landscape from a Thaxted artist

The Essex landscape is traditionally underrated by artists in favour of more classically romantic areas, yet it has classical English beauty. It is being lost through constant building of housing, roads and related sprawling infrastructure at an alarming rate. If people do paint Essex, they do the obviously cute bits and the character, listed buildings. Swathes of Essex have a romantic beauty all their own - a quiet, magical bleakness, a gentle and peaceful ancient heart, but you have to stop and be aware with all your senses to experience it – rather than just being simply handed an immediate wham-bam drama. I have lived here for most of my life, and walked and ridden thousands of miles here. I am intimately involved with our storm-bruised skies, blazing summer sunsets, the hazelly-brick clay and the history of the land – where mammoth's teeth were dug up, forgotten iron-age sites, tumuli nestled in the landscape, decayed roman roads, green lanes, hollow-ways and droves, and the sites of lost and destroyed farm-workers' cottages, medieval barns and manors pulled down after the last war.