Artist Statement

I am a mountain painter whose work explores colour, atmosphere, and the physical presence of landscape. While my main body of work is rooted in soft pastels, I now work across oils, watercolours, and mixed media, using each medium to explore different qualities of light, depth, and movement.

I began working with pastels over seven years ago and was drawn to them for their immediacy, intensity of colour, and painterly potential. After experimenting with a range of techniques, pastels became central to my practice, allowing me to build layered, luminous surfaces that echo the complexity of mountain environments.

The richness of hand-made pastels, combined with high-quality papers and boards, enables an exceptional vibrancy of colour. I often work on very toothy surfaces, similar to sandpaper, which allow me to apply multiple layers of pigment. Building colour gradually — layer upon layer — is essential to creating depth and atmosphere in my paintings.

During the pandemic, I deepened my understanding of materials and scale, investing time in producing more ambitious and larger works. I frequently begin a piece with charcoal, which establishes structure and tonal contrast, and sometimes remains visible as a dark grey element within the finished painting.

I also use pan pastels, particularly in skies, applying them with a sponge to achieve soft transitions and expansive tonal ranges. My skies are rarely a single colour; they often contain several tonal variations of blue to reflect changing light and weather conditions.

Alongside this established pastel practice, I have increasingly expanded into oil painting, drawn by its capacity for depth, layering, and subtle tonal shifts. In parallel, watercolour and mixed media allow for greater spontaneity and fluidity, offering a counterpoint to the more deliberate build-up of pigment in my pastel and oil work.

Across all media, my focus remains the same: to translate the experience of being in the mountains — their scale, light, and emotional resonance — into painterly form.