The Paintings

61 x 51 cms, oil (alkyd) on board, framed.

The view northwest towards the City on a July evening. I was intrigued by the house in the foreground: it seemed to have lights on in most of the windows, but no signs of life.

I abandoned painting this picture for nearly a year to concentrate on other work. Lockdown gave me the opportunity to return to it and I made everything darker.

40 x 29 cms, oil (alkyd) on board, framed.

One of those unreal days in December between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. I’d just come out of the Mall Galleries after visiting an exhibition with friends. One of them looked at the lengthening afternoon shadows and the diffuse winter light and said “There’s your next painting Stephen”.

40 x 29 cms, oil (alkyd) on canvas, framed.

Sarah’s birthday present, October 2021

This was actually a hot Sunday at the end of February, a month more usually associated with winter before global warming. The park had attracted masses of sun-worshippers, but the two girls in the foreground seemed curiously detached from the crowds.

The painting subsequently became my goddaughter Sarah’s 40th birthday present.

100 x 50 cms, oil (alkyd) on canvas, framed.

Chinnock Hollow is a Life for a Life Memorial site, where people can plant a tree in memory of a loved one. The view is southwards, towards the Dorset coast at Bridport.

I completed this painting during the early stages of the pandemic. I wanted to call it “The Last of England”, but Ford Madox Brown had already used that title.

100 x 50 cms, acrylic on canvas, framed.

Painted from a hastily-grabbed photograph taken from a friend’s car, on the way to Dorset. Much of the sky was painted using a sponge: not fully controllable, but probably the better for it.

76 x 51 cms, mixed media on board, framed.

Painted during lockdown, when our everyday lives were thrown into turmoil by the global pandemic. The Office for National Statistics chillingly invited us to “Use our interactive map to explore the number of COVID-19 deaths in your area”. Enough said.

80 x 32cms, oil (alkyd) on board.

Wedding present for Kate & John, 13th August 2022

Frank’s Cafe in Peckham, before the pandemic. I loved this bar at first sight, with its bustling, youthful crowds and its expansive views over the City. The painting was exhibited whilst some Covid restrictions remained in place, and attracted a few wistful comments for its atmosphere.

My cousin’s daughter Kate admired this painting when she visited me a few months before she got married, so it became her wedding present.

60 x 30cms, oil (alkyd) on board, framed.

The greatest rock ‘n roll band in the world, painted from a collage of photos and film stills. The foreground has been compressed for compositional purposes. The painting has an added poignancy since Charlie Watt’s death in 2021.

81 x 30 cms, oil (alkyd) on deep canvas, unframed.

I walked up through Crystal Palace Park one summer evening: the sense of tranquillity was palpable. No raised voices or loud music, just people relaxing and enjoying their surroundings. I’ve tried to convey this slightly unreal feeling in the painting. The perspective has been exaggerated to enhance the sense of space.

30 x 30 cms, oil (alkyd) on deep canvas, unframed.

A winter afternoon in Crystal Palace, with the light starting to fade. The brightly-coloured fruit seemed to glow against the drab urban setting, hinting of more exotic climes.

35 x 35 cms, acrylic on board, framed.

Sold at Pirbright Art Club Exhibition, November 2019

Quex Park is a historic country estate at Birchington-on-Sea in Kent. The owners kindly allowed artists to paint ‘en plein air’ there every month, but sadly the pandemic put an end to this.

The painting shows a corner of the Victorian kitchen garden on a gloriously sunny September day.

35 x 35 cms, acrylic on board, framed.

Another painting done at Quex Park, on a misty October day. The view is in the opposite direction from its predecessor, towards the main house. The vivid red ivy on the wall threatened to dominate the painting.

76 x 51 cms, oil (alkyd) on deep canvas, framed.

This is the view looking westwards from London Bridge towards Cannon Street station after a storm. I ran across four lanes of traffic to try to photograph the swirling clouds before they broke up – not advisable during the rush hour.

61 x 46 cms, acrylic on board, framed.

The same view as the previous painting, but heavily cropped. A spectacular sunset in April, with the first few lights coming on.

The lack of human presence and the empty train lend the painting a certain melancholy, hence the title. One of my favourites, nonetheless.

38 x 62 cms, acrylic on board, framed.

Sold privately, December 2022

This painting owes something to the 1930s linocuts of Cyril Power, and is loosely based around the old Angel station in Islington. In the rush-hour the narrow island platform often became dangerously overcrowded, and the station was redesigned in 1992. By chance one of the architects saw my painting at an exhibition – he told me I should have painted the new station!

After I’d sold the painting the new owner wrote to me to say that he’d hung it in his office at home to remind him of the joys of commuting.

61 x 61 cms, oil (alkyd) on board, framed.

The muted light and strange reflections in my friends’ conservatory at dusk drew my attention initially. I wanted to add a figure from the beginning: viewers of a certain age may notice a resemblance to the late Sylvia Kristel.

90 x 60cms, mixed media on canvas, framed.

Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari leaves the track during free practice for the 2018 Abu Dhabi GP.

I’ve been a motor-racing fan ever since my father took my brother and myself to Brands Hatch in the Sixties, so it was inevitable that I’d try my hand at painting an F1 car. Not in the same league as Michael Turner’s Studio 88 work, but fun to do.

100 x 50 cms, oil (alkyd) on canvas, framed.

Sold at Village Artists Exhibition, Denbies Wine Estate, July 2021

The view from the Royal Albert railway bridge over the River Tamar, between Devon and Cornwall – I slightly exaggerated the distances to give a sense of space.

I struggled with the light on the water in this one, repainting it several times. In the end someone liked it enough to buy it.

61 x 61 cms, acrylic on board, framed.

Not the famed ‘Dock of the Bay’, but South London during an August heatwave. It was already hot at 7am, but the man on the bench looked as though he’d be sitting there all day – he reminded me of the opening line from Otis Redding’s classic song.

76 x 61 cms, oil (alkyd) on canvas, framed.

A cold and blustery winter’s afternoon walk on the Dorset coast near Burton Bradstock. The sun was already low in the sky, and the horizontal light caught the sandstone cliffs. Another favourite painting.

36 x 36 cms, acrylic on board, framed.

Painted from an oil sketch made a couple of years previously. The original looked rather empty without a figure but fortunately Olive obliged with a display of gymnastics. I tried to remember the carefree excitement of childhood with the school holidays stretching out ahead.

61 x 46 cms, acrylic on board, framed.

As the world knows, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second died on the 8th of September 2022, after a lifetime of dedicated service to the British nation and Commonwealth. I watched most of the following week’s events unfold on television, but the image that stuck most in my mind was the hearse’s lonely journey from RAF Northolt to Buckingham Palace along the drab streets of West London, accompanied by a trio of police motorcycle outriders.          Sic transit gloria mundi . . .

Following the funeral a theme of ‘Pageantry’ was suggested at the September meeting of Pirbright Art Club. This was my tiny homage to a great woman.

46 x 61 cms, oil on board, framed.

Sold at Pirbright Art Club Exhibition, December 2016

I caught the 38 bus from Islington to Victoria one evening. The front seats upstairs were unoccupied: a wonderful opportunity to take photographs of London at night. The painting is approximately where High Holborn becomes Shaftsbury Avenue. Another favourite: I remember it being fun to do.

61 x 30 cms, acrylic on board, framed.

One of South London’s largest green spaces, with sweeping views westward and the familiar red buses like Dinky Toys on the A23 below. The Common is on the 249 bus route from the top of my road: a place to sketch or read or just contemplate the view.

I tried hard to convey space and distance in this painting, and to demonstrate that the Common is a place for all, regardless of race, age or creed. There beneath the blue suburban skies . . .