Own work: Current sketches

     I'm currently making preparatory sketches for a painting of the entrance façade of Gordon Wu Hall, Princeton.  Wu Hall dates from 1983 and is the work of Robert Venturi & Denise Scott Brown, an important piece of Postmodernism in architecture.  The building as a whole seems heavily indebted to British architecture of the fin-du-siècle and the Edwardian age; particularly, I think, the work of Sir Edwin Lutyens, and Charles Holden.  The entrance façade is startling when the rest of the building is red brick; it seems to reference the sort of patterns Lutyens used and also the facades of Italian renaissance churches  with their extensive marble plaquing.  Doing some research on another project yesterday, I had reason to look at the Sebastiano Serlio's book 'Regole Generali di Architetura' of 1537 published in Venice.  I wonder if the illustrations (woodcuts) in that book, and others, were an influence on this extraordinary facade? 

    Mixed media: biro, felt-tip, pencil & wax crayon.

Own work: San Pietro della Immagini

     Have sort of finished this, the façade of the Sardinian Romanesque church of San Pietro della Immagini - St Peter of the Images.  The images being a Deposition group of polychromatic sculptures that was once housed in the church.  St Peter's is situated in the small town of Bulzi. Not really that happy with it, but I can't honestly see a way forward.  

Work in Progress: San Pietro delle Immagini

     Currently working on this, the façade of the Sardinian Romanesque church of San Pietro della Immagini - St Peter of the Images.  The images being a Deposition group of polychromatic sculptures that was once housed in the church.  St Peter's is situated in the small town of Bulzi. 

Own work: Rusticated Façade from Colmann's 'Vollstandige Answeisung ze der Civil Baukunst'

      Finished on Friday, 06.11.25, mixed media, on 300 mgsm watercolour paper.  Based on a design in Nicholaus Goldmann's  'Vollstandige Anweisung zu der Civil Baukunst' of 1699, showing a rusticated façade of the Tuscan order.

Work in Progress

   It's the end of the month already, and I thought I'd just share with you something I'm currently working on.  It has no title yet.  Let me explain: this painting is based on an image I found on Pinterest, from some sort of Early-Modern architectural treatise, northern European most likely.  German or Flemish.  Mostly likely the former. And until I do some research  I'm at a loss as to title.  In the mean time I can say that the structure, some sort of pavilion(?), is in the Tuscan style, though the order has been stretched somewhat - it's usually much squatter than that, though I suppose the architect has taken their cue from Palladio's treatment of the Doric order.  The blank metopes are found in Serlio, I think.  In all, a very Mannerist design; the sort of thing the likes of Richard Norman Shaw purr with delight.  

     Anyway, the usual mixed media - in this case pen and ink, butter resist and watercolour.

Own Work: Arundel House Arch

     Finally a new painting to show you.  A depiction of a now non-existent gate Inigo Jones designed for Arundel House, London.  Mannerism in full flow, almost Jacobean.  Mixed media.

Own work: sketches towards 'The Great Stone'

 

      I thought I'd share with you the sketches I have made so far as I work towards a new pen and ink drawing 'The Great Stone'.  Hopefully it'll give you a good idea of the process of creating an artwork.

Own work: Three monoprints

 

     Three prints to share with you.   All are augmented monoprints.  I did them some time ago, and have come back to them in the last day or so.  Distance has enabled me to re-assess them and perhaps they are not without some merit.  The first two are on photocopy paper, the third on watercolour paper.  The first has been worked on in ink & oil pastel, the second in biro & oil pastel and the third ink, watercolour & oil pastel.

Own work: The Banqueting House, Studley Royal

      So, The Banqueting House at Studley Royal, in N Yorkshire, that remarkable water garden that also includes the ruined Fountains Abbey within its purlieus. I have been to the Abbey, as a teenager, but not the garden.  The Banqueting House is thought to be a design by Colen Campbell, built by the mason Thomas Buck between 1728 and 1732.  Rather Baroque, all things considered.  Mixed media, 56 x 36 cms on 300gsm watercolour paper.

Own work: The Temple of Bacchus, Stowe

     Of late I've been rather interested in garden structures, such as follies and banqueting houses, and, slightly tangential, to that the influence English garden structures, such as those by Vanbrugh and Kent had on French Neo-classicists such as Claude-Nicholas Ledoux.  I'm particularly drawn to the over-scaled and dramatic architecture of Sir John Vanbrugh.

     Here is my interpretation of a now lost building by Vanbrugh - The Temple of Bacchus that once stood in the gardens at Stowe, in Buckinghamshire.  It was built in 1719 for Viscount Cobham and survived until the 1920s when it was demolished for the school chapel designed by Sir Robert Lorimer.  
     I accidentally discovered a photographic illustration of the temple in a book in the horticultural library at Aberglasney.  It was my first I encounter with the building and I was very intrigued - it had drama and heft.  A quality of presence and mystery.  It was, I thought, a suitable subject for a painting, but could find very few other illustrations of the temple? and those were of poor quality or too small.  However I wasn't to be deterred, and so here then, based on those meagre resources, is my evocation of a lost part of our architectural history, our patrimony.  Mixed media, 23 x 46 cms.

Own work: Cirencester Park

      A new work to share with you: the Entrance to Cirencester Park, Cirencester, Gloucestershire. Mixed media, on 300gsm watercolour paper. The arch connects the house to the town; the great mass of greenery is the mightily impressive yew hedge, at some 40ft high and the tallest in the world. The arch may be the design of the 1st Earl Bathurst, who designed the house itself in a stripped down Baroque style. The arch is rather French in feel with those chainages, and none the worse for that. I think on the whole I prefer French classicism to the Italian variety.

Own work: 'Archway, Bath'

     Welcome to the Salon des Refuses. I painted this specifically for an exhibition in London. Not something I usually do as living in south west Wales it is such a schlep. Anyway I was relieved of the hassle of getting it up to town and back by being rejected. Alas.

     The judging criteria meant that this isn't in my usual mixed media. I have had to work in water soluble media only. This has meant a change in my technique, and a little learning in the process. The composition is also slightly different in that I have included the urban context of the arch, which I usually play down or omit altogether.

     Perhaps this is not sort of architecture that one immediately thinks of in connection with Bath - it being Georgian and all that. This structure is however late Victorian, the work of the Scottish born architect J M Brydon, and illustrates how by the turn of twentieth century British architecture was swinging back to full blown Classicism. It forms part of his complex of civic buildings - Guildhall, Market and Art Gallery - in the centre of the city. The arch is merely the rear entrance to the site. I love its sculptural, mannerist qualities.

Own work: St Cathan, Llangathen

      Finally, finally, started painting again! It has been months of emptiness. The consequences of Lockdown here in the UK - not the epidemic, but Lockdown. And here is what I've managed to produce - a bit laboured I'm sad to say. The 'usual' mixed media. All this activity as I'm exhibiting in next month at Aberglasney: 10-06.22 - 16.06.22

Own work: Grant's Iron Foundry

     As avid readers of this blog will know I am very much a fan of Bryan Browning - south Lincolnshire's finest, and provincial architect extraordinaire. It is an architecture of power and emotion with roots in the English Baroque school and French Neo-classicism. Anyway here is my latest painting a mixed media effort. It depicts the monumental entrance to the former Grant's Iron Foundry on Wharf Rd in Stamford. Quite the thing.

Own work - an arch from Alessandro Francini's 'Architecture'