What I Thought I Was Painting When I arrived in Chianni, I thought I was going to paint olive trees. I imagined myself chasing the view, trying to capture the Tuscan landscape before the light changed. Instead, something unexpected happened. The paintings gradually became less about the landscape and more about being there. A paint box left open in the grass. Lunch beneath the trees. An empty chair in the shade. Small moments that would have seemed unimportant if I hadn’t sto

This afternoon I packed a new pochade box, a handful of oil paints and wandered into the olive grove. The grove, in Chianni, Tuscany, was quiet. Beyond the olive trees, the countryside stretched away in layers of ochre fields, distant hills and soft blue skies. Painting outdoors has a way of making you look differently. The light shifts constantly, colours change and there is always far more to paint than can ever fit onto a small panel. What interested me wasn’t every tree o

A Lifetime Returned This morning I sat outside Bar Centrale with a coffee, watching the village wake up around me. As always, people drifted in and out. Friends stopping to chat. Families meeting. The familiar rhythm of a small Italian town carrying on as it always has. But this morning I found myself watching a father and son. The father must be in his nineties now. Over the three years I’ve been coming to Chianni, I’ve watched him become a little frailer with each passing s

Some paintings arrive slowly, through layers of observations and uncertainty, and others seem to gather themselves almost quietly over time. The Afternoon Room felt somewhere in between. This new 100x100cm oil painting became less about describing a particular place and more about trying to capture atmosphere...the feeling of being inside a room while the landscape beyond the window continues to shift with light, reflection and movement. I wanted the figure to remain soft and