My dad had an allotment back in the late ’70s and I used to go down there with him to plant and weed and harvest. I remember the wonderful fruit and vegetables that people grew there, the seriousness with which they took their growing, and how much hard work it took to keep even a small plot at the allotments in good shape. I know I don’t have the time to look after one properly now, but I’m very fond of the strange mix of ramshackle sheds and highly ordered rows of plants that you find at a traditional allotment, it’s a unique landscape.

 While I don’t have a plot myself, my friend Paul does and I’m sometimes treated to delicious produce. I go up there and take a few pics from time to time as I find the place a fascinating subject. I did these studies from some photos I took in the winter. I was amazed at how much was still being harvested throughout the winter and what was still growing. 

Even on the dullest grey day the colour in the strawberry plants was stunning, the plants seeming to be both collapsing in on themselves and throwing out new shoots at the same time.



And while I’m no fan of Brussels sprouts, the winter plants made wonderful sculptural shapes to paint.

Now it’s spring and I know there’s lots of work to do up at the allotments. One day, maybe when I retire, I’ll have one of my own to potter around in, until then, I do enjoy drawing and sketching them 😉

April Garden – Early Evening, acrylic on paper on panel, 60 x 60 cm, April 2017

Well the green fuse is lit and the gardens and hedgerows down here in Kent are well and truly off. The surge of growth has been accelerated here by some mild, very dry weather and the gardeners are already praying for rain; there are even whisperings of the dreaded hosepipe ban if things don’t change. No change on the horizon, though, this week looks cool, but quite dry.

My artistic process has been hibernating somewhat over the winter and I’ve done little work apart from some small scale studies and sketches since Christmas. But it’s high time to get going, so the weekend was about dusting off the art table and getting down to some snipping and glueing again as I made this collage to get back into the swing of things. I feel very rusty and out of practice but that will soon go if I keep making and build up some momentum now. I put this image down quickly, without much planning and it shows; there are too many elements, the tones are much too strong and dark and there are clashing styles going on, it’s all a bit of a cacophony but it’s got me back doing stuff which was its main purpose.

The image is inspired by the glorious clematis plants flowering in my friends’ garden at the moment. This beautiful blue flower is Clematis Alpina. growing up through a variegated Kiwi plant or Aktinidia Kolomikta, and with a little wren which I’ve seen bobbing about over there. My friends have several lovely varieties in their garden and they are one of my favourite plants flowering at this time of year.

So, onwards now, shake off the winter inertia and channel a bit of that green energy flowing through the new shoots and stems; lets get going!

A few more little acrylic and gouache studies of my friends’ garden in Whitstable. The garden had so many moods and colour palettes during the year, it’s endlessly stimulating…

The weather has turned cool and grey this weekend in Berlin. Two weeks ago we were sunbathing and putting on sunscreen –  more like woolly jumpers today 😒

Ever since I can remember I’ve been entranced by flowers and plants. As a boy I’d collect cacti and succulents and spend a lot of time pottering about in mum and dad’s garden. I could spend several lifetimes just studying them and drawing and painting them, I find them endlessly fascinating and rewarding. I don’t have a garden of my own now, just a balcony at our home in Berlin where I enjoy growing a few things. But my friends Paul and Phil, who live round the corner in Whitstable are very keen gardeners and they have a gorgeous garden that I’m always nosing around in. Phil photographs his garden beautifully as well, and he’s kindly let me rifle through his folders and use his images to draw from – thanks Phil! I also visit the botanical gardens in Berlin several times a year and photograph the plants there, it’s a real gem of a place. 

I’m keen to paint some large flower images and to use flowers in some of the other work in developing so I’m starting off with some studies and small sketches; I’d never tire of drawing flowers!

The garden and the idea of the garden is compltely magical. Derek Jarman captures it in his book Modern Nature, written while he was creating his garden in the shingle of Dungeness. Time spent gardening is like a time out of time, no wonder it feels so therapeutic, there’s nothing like it for getting some perspective. 

The stories and folklore that have grown up around plants and flowers are vast in scope. Each flower in the garden seems to have a rich store of symbolism attached to it. They may not, at first, seem the most conceptually interesting subjects for an artist, but I find flowers captivating. 

Oh, and I did one of those ‘what flower are you?’ Personality quiz things – I got ‘Bird of Paradise’; not what I was expecting lol. 

Gathering my thoughts, mainly, after a period of about three months when the ‘day job’ took over most of my energy, and time at my art table was limited. I’m fortunate I have a day job I enjoy, but i’m so going to appreciate working a bit less from now on and getting back to doing some painting.

As well as gathering my thoughts, i’m gathering up the few scraps and fragments that i’ve been able to do over the last few weeks and start to develop them. Here’s a photo of another gathering, of my lighthouse keeper figures this time; i’m not sure what they talk about when they get together, I think they get a bit competitive; ‘well, you should have seen the storm that came over last week, a Force 10 and 30ft waves, terrible it was’, ‘well, that’s nothing, we had 60ft waves up on the north coast AND a Kraken that tried to take us down, you were lucky’, etc. etc.

I’m going to using the lighthouse keeper in some larger scale collages i’m planning, as well as a few other characters. There’s the beginnings of one here, this is the top of a tall, narrow format piece of board that will have have a lighthouse keeper figure added and some sea kale, a plant that grows plentifully on the shingle beaches down here:

Here’s another chap, a young man, wandering by the sea who’ll make an appearance too:

And i’m still enthralled by the Dungeness Landscape on the South Kent coast. Here are a few sketches that will be worked up into collages and paintings at some point this year or added as background components of some of those larger pieces:

On this sketchbook page i’ve scrawled ‘there, in my dreaming’; words I found in Derek Jarman’s Modern Nature that caught my imagination, as a lot of these ideas are for images that take place in a kind of time out of time….

And finally, i’m planning some larger garden paintings to further explore the ideas I began looking into with some small paintings before Christmas last year, such as this painting of a corner of my friends’ garden in Whitstable:

I’m itching to get some big brushes out, loaded with paint and to just play with mark making on a bigger surface. So, that’ll keep me busy for the the rest of the year I reckon, plus some more 3D work I want to, but the extra time i’ll have each week now, as well as this glorious spring weather we’ve been has have put a bit of fuel in the tank and i’m raring to go 🙂