In this blog I hope to share my interests in all aspects of art and design, be it painting, graphic art, applied art, pattern design, a love of letter forms or garden design. I have dabbled in all of these to varying degrees, more often than not, for the sheer pleasure of it, though my main activity is as a painter – welcome to my studio.
3. A Reluctant Gardener
12 - 08 - 2026
Art manifests itself in many forms: I would never consider myself a gardener or garden designer. I have no in-depth knowledge of plants, landscape design or propagation. I have never grown vegetables or fruit and have no interest in having a perfect lawn. My main interest in plants is their colour and how big they will grow. Despite this, I love gardens and have painted many – not the perfectly manicured sort but the small intimate spaces where plants play off against hard structure, where the shadows cast by them are as important as the plants themselves. I prefer it when things are slightly broken or uneven; old steps, crumbling walls, pots, weathered statues – the atmosphere created by the patina of life.
There have been times however, when I have been forced to confront the prospect of creating a garden and for that I fell back on my skills as a graphic designer, my love of pattern and experience as a painter – playing off one colour against another and using the negative spaces (the spaces between objects) with equal importance as the positive ones.
It seems to be the lot of an artist to be always short of money. And so it was many years ago when my wife and I decided to radically change our lives – it was time for me we felt, to pursue painting as a full time career! We had bought a redundant pig farm near the north Norfolk coast and planned to convert the many outbuildings into a gallery and painting workshops. But, before we could consider tackling any of that a more pressing problem presented itself when we tried to set up a table and chairs outside in the garden to have a cup of tea. There was not a single flat surface to be found! The table tipped one way and all of the chairs tipped in different directions no matter where we placed them. We had not set a budget for the garden and there were more pressing problems – so, what to do?
I had noticed that in a field on the other side of a lane that ran down the side of the house there appeared to be a pile of broken concrete which I assumed was once the floor of a small barn the farmer had demolished. I asked him if he needed them and he said no, he was glad to see the back of them. I don’t know how I managed it but I somehow man-handled the lumps of concrete over the hedge, across the lane and into our garden and set about resetting them in the form of crazy paving (they are the area under the white table and chairs in the picture above where the paving changes colour). That simple change of direction set in motion a complete transformation of the garden. The property had not been used as a pig farm for many years, the owner was elderly, and everything neglected. What it did have however, was lots of rubble, blocks, broken paving and bricks. This was my palette, and with this, the washing line prop, a spirit level and a ball of string I set about remodeling the entire area around the house.
Finding my levels with a ball of string.
The house was a little unusual in so much as one approached it from the rear, the consequence of which was the first thing to greet visitors was the old piggeries on the other side of the yard which were not very attractive. For reasons of expediency I decided the best thing to do was camouflage them by burying them under as much foliage as possible. History helped me here because, after years of pig droppings the soil around the piggeries was so rich everything took off like a space rocket! I decided to return to the yard area at the back of the house at a later date as I still had to resolve the problems of the uneven surface at the front.
The old piggeries before.
The piggeries after
The area I had laid with the broken floor from the demolished barn was a little way out from the house so I needed to link the two in some way. I bought a few slabs and gathered around me a collection of old bricks broken slabs, large pebbles and decided to approach it as if it was an abstract painting by tackling a small area at a time, standing back and looking at the shape of the area that was left (the negative space) and repeating the process. In this way I worked my way across the front of the house in stages, making it up as I went along using whatever materials I had to hand and infilling with new slabs and gravel where it was needed. I also infilled from time to time with brushed concrete, a technique I had discovered from a wonderful little booklet published by the Cement and Concrete Association in the early 1970’s which I had kept.
Part of the front of the house before.
Above: A series of photos showing the front garden after. It's amazing what you can do with the washing line prop, a spirit level and a ball of string!
It was time to return to the area at the back of the house. I knocked down some low walls and using some wood left lying around made an arbour and planted some climbing roses. The previous owners used to break up palettes in this area to burn on the fire so the ground was littered with nails. I had several punctures in a short space of time so I got a digger in, leveled the ground and had a ton of gravel put down. The only thing left to do was sort out the entrance to the barn attached to the side of the house which was to become my studio and here, history had a part to play again! Inside one of the small piggeries a door had been laid on its side to act as a divider between the stalls. The pigs used this over decades to scratch themselves against and had worn the wood away to a beautiful patina leaving waves in the wood no hand of man could reproduce! I designed a frame to go around this with some glass to let the light in and had it installed to replace the old door that was there before. Job done, it was time to get back to sorting the house out.
Above: Finishing off the yard at the back of the house.
The entrance to the studio with the door molded by the pigs into waves after years of scratching themselves against it.
Over time I used the garden to promote my work.
A watercolour of the old piggeries after covering them in foliage. it was only later I realised that when I had been planning the garden I had been looking at each area as if through a frame.
2. My Studio
24 – 06 – 2026
I have always liked work spaces. I like the way they reflect the activity of their owners, the way they evolve and change over time with the emphasis on function not appearance and yet, many turn out to be full of character and interest. My own workspace, my studio, is no exception. It is a place of production, contemplation and creativity. It moves through these various stages changing its mood as my eclectic brain jumps from one project to another.
My studio is filled with all sorts of things that interest me and stimulate my restless mind. Nobody makes me walk across the courtyard to my studio every day but when I slide back the door in the morning it’s like stepping into a comfortable pair of shoes, it is my space and almost everything in it has been created by me. In a world where many people spend their working days as part of a process, a cog in a wheel, I consider myself privileged to be able to start and finish a project within these four walls and take pleasure in looking at the results. Each day is filled with possibilities.
My working life for many years was in graphic design and it is through this that I developed an interest in typography, letter forms, fine printing, pattern design and the applied arts. I have met some renowned people in these areas and was fortunate to work for clients whose products had a close connection to the arts. Later, when I became a full time painter, I retained my interest in all these things.
My work routine goes through phases. The summer months are mainly devoted to painting activities, as I work outside to paint, and the winter months (November, December, January and February) are admin. This can involve writing, designing, work on the computer, keeping a data base of my paintings up to date or dealing with printers. I have a mezzanine in the studio and the computer is upstairs so it is very cosy in the winter. I also scan or copy my paintings during this time for my data base. I like to have the original paintings beside me as I do this to colour match them as near as possible to the results on the computer. Having a visual record of my work is important for exhibitions, publicity, my website or any printed material I wish to produce.
I surround myself with things I find on the beach, in the fields or in junk shops. Driftwood, shells, interesting rocks. Old (antique) studio equipment, wooden letters from the days of letterpress printing all go into the mix of making the studio an interesting place to work. The collection of pots below was acquired over many years as props for paintings; they come from France, the UK and Ireland. Many of these things cost nothing, those that did, cost very little. Perhaps my most treasured possession is my collection of books. They were built up over many years and many are now long out of print. They cover all aspects of painting, the applied arts, design, printing and history of art as well as the history of gardens and garden design. There are boxes full of cuttings from magazines and newspapers and lever arch files filled with design ideas and reference material. I have made several attempts to catalogue it all but I give up after a few days. The problem is compounded by the computer which is now also full of reference material growing by the day together with a visual archive of my work. There was a time when I wanted nothing to do with computers; I come from a background when most things were done by hand but the computer has enabled me to bring to fruition many of my design ideas and has added another dimension to my working day. To me it is a tool, it adds something to what I do, it does not take away. Every project still starts with a drawing or scribble; I think with a pencil or a brush in my hand, not a mouse.
When I lock the door behind me of an evening and make the short walk across to the house I usually take two or three books with me to thumb through while I watch television, or a pad to scribble down ideas. It’s a habit my daughter has inherited from me; she is also a designer. Locking the door is important, it helps me separate work from home. I try to work to a strict routine and keep my domestic life and work life apart but it can be difficult. That short space between the two buildings makes all the difference.