Radio interview and Pintar Rapido

Rowing club at Putney

Today I was invited along to BBC Radio Lincolnshire to be interviewed by Melvyn Prior, live on the 'Melvyn in the morning' show. It was so much fun to actually go into the radio station, as last time I did an interview via telephone about painting the pageant in 2012. This time Melvyn wanted to talk about our year living on the island as well as my latest awards.

If you'd like to, you can listen to the interview during the next seven days. The radio programme is 2 hours 59 minutes long, and if you want to just skip to my bit I come in just after the first hour.

You can listen here! 

I also wanted to tell you about an event coming up in London, called Pintar Rapido. It's on the weekend of the 19th and 20th July, and it's an exciting new annual plein air event in the UK which began last year. Hundreds of artists will be joining in (including me), on the Saturday painting in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea and on the Sunday exhibiting all the paintings at Chelsea Old Town Hall on Kings Road.
If you'd like to take part in all that excitement then you need to act quickly because the closing date to register for an artist's pass is June 30th.
It's sure to be an incredible atmosphere and a fun weekend. Find out more here :-)

The Thames at Teddington

Teddington Lock

This is a painting from a few months ago that I haven't shown you yet. It's the river Thames at Teddington Lock.

Here's a bit of historical interest for you - in May 1940 Teddington Lock was the assembly point for an enormous flotilla of small ships from the length of the River Thames to be used in the evacuation of Dunkirk. Hundreds of merchant marine boats, fishing boats, pleasure craft and lifeboats were called into service to rescue the stranded British and French troops from the beach at Dunkirk. More than 300,000 were brought back across the channel in this curious collection of crafts. Churchill described it as a 'miracle of deliverance' in his famous "We shall fight them on the beaches" speech.

Back to the present day I'm able to enjoy some restful studio time this week, working on developing ideas from plein air studies to new studio pieces. It's getting very chilly and I'm keeping an eye out for snow... any snowfall and me and my paints will be out like a shot!

Advance notice that I'm having a large solo exhibition in Nottingham from January 8th to 13th 2014. I will be there every day from 10.00am to 3.30pm so if you think you might possibly be able to make it pop it in your diary now and I shall be very happy to see you there!

Rowing club at Putney

Rowing club at Putney

Things get hotter! The day after painting with the Royal Institute of Oil painters at Maidenhead I painted at Putney with the Wapping group - boy was it hot in the city! Thirty degrees celsius I found out later. There was actually a weather warning in place, we're not good at dealing with weather extremes in this country. Heat and cold both take us by surprise. We're fine with rain and drizzle though.
Anyway, of the four paintings spanning the two days this is by far my favourite one and it only took HALF AN HOUR to paint - how does that happen?!
In fact I confess that I almost didn't start it, thinking it was too ambitious a subject for the time frame but there you go! Surprised myself by managing to capture the essence of the scene, with probably no wasted strokes!

Rowing club at Putney - detail

This is the other painting from the day, the one I laboured over in the sweltering heat -

Towards Putney bridge

And this is a better look at the afternoon one from the day before -