Another important aspect of my work that relates to both painting and landscape is the duality of nature and man. Within painting, I have a fascination with the dichotomy of the mark created by the artist and the autonomous form (the absence of the artist).

In order to explore this duality I work firstly with acrylic paint, carefully manipulating to allow the paint, surface and water react together. I then work over this initial painting with a more physical, gestural painted brushstroke in oils.

The paintings are fleeting glimpses of the landscape, they are borne from countless exposure to the raw elements of the Peak District. They are not picture postcard visual recordings of any particular vistas, but more a memory of an experience, a culmination of many remembered elements of the landscape, merged together and capturing a sense of the place. The paintings act as a freeze frame to my subconscious mind, capturing little snippets of long forgotten experiences.

My work also focuses on a shift of scale that occurs in nature. Fractals, shapes that we see in the smallest things are naturally replicated on a larger scale within the landscape. This is mirrored in my paintings by translating elements such as brushstrokes and gestural marks from the small paintings into larger paintings thus retaining the same look and feel.

The work is focused on two distinct, but totally differing areas of the Peak District. The Dark Peak with its gritstone edges, harsh landscape and unforgiving weather system and the White Peak, with rolling hills, limestone dales and milder weather.

This dichotomy of landscape translates into the paintings. The Peak District is an environment that allows me to explore the boundaries between nature and imagination. It offers contrasting elements that sometimes make me wonder if they could exist in any other place: it is a mix of beautiful yet harsh, bright and yet dark, cold and warm at the same time. To be in the Derbyshire landscape is to invigorate my senses, an opportunity to re-establish my connection to the very essence of nature. I feel that through experiencing and painting the landscape, I become a part of that environment and it a part of me, allowing me to transmute this empathetic connection into a visual outcome, through the mediums of landscape and paint.