TRAVEL PAINTING
EXPERIENCE THE LANDSCAPE EN PLEIN AIR
Travel Painting - What It Means To Me
I want to share something very personal with you.
Two days before I was due to set off on my first solo trip, and my first trip exclusively to paint, I had a serious health scare. The Big C. For those hours immediately after, I felt lost, numb, scared.
I’ll first say that everything is now fine, but it is a day and a time that will haunt me for a while yet.
I almost cancelled my trip. But I knew I had to go. I’d been looking for motivation in my art practice for a long time - I’d been a little lost for the last few years - and figured a solo trip to Edinburgh and the Scottish highlands could be just what I needed. Turns out, this travel painting holiday became so much more symbolic, transformative, both for my art and personally.
I realised that I needed painting the most during the darkest times of my life, but for the first time, I had clarity on the subject. I was immersed in the landscapes that had fuelled my childhood, filled my television and transported me through the pages of countless novels and natural history books. I felt like I was home again after a very long time.
I try to travel - and paint while travelling - as much as the constraints of finances and family life let me. And whether it’s for five minutes, fifteen or an hour, just admiring a seedling peeping up through the cracks in a crumbling rubble wall or taking a long walk, those moments in nature are what I seek. The quiet, the solitude, the time to admire the wonders of the natural forms of the landscape, the plays of light and shade, and to immerse myself in the sounds.
Travel painting can be enjoyed both on the road and in the studio, and though many of my landscape collections have their roots in a travel experience, it is in the studio that I can explore and expand on these ideas, with the tools, time and space to build on my initial thoughts. I take a sketchbook with me every time I travel or visit nature, and sometimes I take visual notes - little scribbles and sketches, and sometimes I take notes on a particular atmosphere, or an interesting composition, or write down my first feelings of the place where I’m stood.
Travel painting was my guidance at a time I needed it the most, and since that Scotland trip I have painted or sketched every single day, having found a new motivation and passion to rediscover the art of the landscape.
Travel Sketchbooks
My Favourite Landscapes to Paint While Travelling
My favourite landscapes to paint are definitely mountains. I study them with the intensity of Cezanne, studying the shadows of the rocks and crevices, desperate to capture the right shade of blue of the snowy peaks. They are incredibly unique in colour, shape, texture and mood. Some mountains like the cracked, spiky Torres del Paine in Patagonia feel withered, aged and stand with their weather-beaten faces leaning into the fierce winter winds. Others like the peaks of Glencoe in the Scottish highlands, while nowhere near as tall, are some of the oldest rocks in the world - over 300 million years old - yet their great age makes them seem immovable, tranquil, calm. No storm, nor biting wind nor landslide can shake these giants.
Away from atmospheric vistas, I find peace and wonder in great forests or even in the local patches of woodland in the English Midlands - where I grew up. There is so much to see in the forest, even when it is still and quiet. The leaves form an emerald umbrella, filtering the sunlight down to the ground in the most incredible patchwork of yellow and gold.
Every place I travel to leaves a firm mark in my memory, and one that I capture in the sketchbook or as works on canvas.
Every landscape has a story to tell.