After teaching on a Foundation Course for two years in Sheffield I moved to Cumbria with my partner, also an artist but trained at the RA schools. My own painting, by 1970, was reflecting this move to Cumbria and our pre-occupation with turning a row of three tiny houses near Aspatria into living and studio space; somewhere we could paint and live cheaply. Having spent 18 long months on house renovation - domestic architecture the dominant thought and activity and with painting suppressed totally - there emerged, I suppose inevitably for me, several paintings of interiors. You see this interest in these three slides.

In July 1980 the first five were exhibited with the studies at the L.Y.C. Gallery. For this exhibition I wrote:

The Art of the Feltmaker showed me that to make felt in its most basic form only the interlocking property of the fibres themselves are used to form the fabric; and that as the fibres have been previously dyed, the colour is part of the body and not applied to the surface. This idea of colour in depth interested me and I was keen to keep the purity of the method, and not use appliquéd areas of felt. I liken the method more too handmade paper than to textile; vegetable or animal what odds.

I found that my natural scale of working in this medium was larger than I had required hitherto.

Felt 2 Felt hanging 1980 183cm x 183cm

The medium is unable to stand the fussiness of drawing but can stand delicacy of colour. The sky subject matter reinforces the need for a large scale, although in choosing sky as partner to this medium I have not yet explored felt’s potential for strong colour.

The medium being new to me prevents preconceptions, allowing a sabbatical from previous subject matter and aims. I am not in a position, just seven months after the commencement of these felts, to judge them in the context of my work; but as an exercise, the commitment to looking at fast-changing skies and the freer approach of the medium combined with the cruel necessity of accepting the result once the felting process has been completed are toughening disciplines for one who normally allows to evolve over a period of many months.

July 1980

Felt 20 Felt hanging 1981 at the Whitworth Manchester 183cm x183cm

All my felts have a JC felted into the their backs. With exception felt one, early felts 2 to 29 are also numbered on their backs.

Recurrent Themes

“Sky Felts”For the past two years I have been involved with felts and skies, which, for me, is a dialogue between a new medium and a new subject. He desire to work in the medium came first; to look at skies second. Excitement with looking at skies became foremost; their integration with felt became natural.

Trees: The varying relationship between trees and sky, affected by changes of weather, seasons, light and position, is my present pre-occupation. Studies in various drawing and colour media are first put down as direct experiences. The felts which follow are interpretations. A simple statement, a drawing, interpreted in a more complex language, a painting or felt, grows as it assimilates other meanings, relationships, even misunderstandings and corrections, on the way. A lengthy conversation occurs between me and the developing felt.(1988)

Felt 27 (Construction) 1983 76cm x 90cm 

Light and Lustres: In this exhibition the works are interpretations in felt of five different patches of light: - on concrete floor, carpet, and coloured papers. Firstly an appropriate palette has to be created: the wool is dyed, and from these colours further adjustments and variety are achieved by carding together in different proportions, or overlaying semi¬transparent “tissues” of coloured felt, as in the “Patch of Light on Carpet”. The special felting characteristic of the wool fibre allows a homogeneous image to emerge from parts which are in quite differing stages of felting: loose fibres; partially felted shapes of varying thickness floating on or among the loose fibres; partially felted adjacent areas joined to sharpen a line, etc.; all means at my disposal to produce the desired visual objective. (1987)

Opposite you can see (from top to bottom):

Happening felt

Absracts: There is also a group of abstract felts; I have often found the need to balance my observational work with completely abstract work, developing it alongside. Some of these began as small samples or demonstration pieces and later became integrated into an abstract composition, many being cut into, reorganised and felted again.

Pebbles: These are pebbles and sea-rubbed fragments of pottery picked up at Allonby, our nearest bit of Solway coast. Each “pebble” was translated into felt in a way which echoed its own “making”-the layering of sandstone, or the soft and hard intrusions making a gully or a ridge cutting through the stone. When each was individually made, several were composed together and then felted finally. (1987)

About to Fall  felt 1988

Sea/Coast: The exhibition is of a body of work produced over the last nine months during Visual Arts Year an award from the Northern Arts I selected places on the Solway coast to draw and paint; notably just north of Allonby, my nearest point and thus an area I have known over the last twenty five years. The beach, though recognizably the same, alters from one day to the next by the tides shifting, covering, exposing: poignantly noticeable to someone who is happy to draw a patch of stones. Drawings and paintings in oil in situ and, much later, a triptych of felts was derived from one painting.

Moving down the coast, the sandstone rocks at Maryport, below the Roman fort and museum, were fascinating for their formation and tidal carvings, and the majority of my drawing time was spent here. Later, in the studio, I worked on three felts from this subject: two small framed felts and a large, complex felt hanging.

Conservatory x12 Tempera on boards

Further south in Workington I began work in response to the cliffs of steelworks slag and the shore below with its giant boulders of rusting metal; a man-made shore, hard underfoot, patchwork pavement of pig iron, brick wall, slag and tiles; an intriguing place where the industrial past is allowed to become part of the landscape and be worked on by the sea. There is evidence of this from Whitehaven through Harrington, Workington and to Maryport. Though I began some drawing, I have not yet done justice to my reaction to these places and so, after the exhibition at the Beacon, will be continuing with the work.

Opposite you can see 

Enamel Maqette for outside Heworth 73cm x 118cm

Leafmold x 12 1993 46cm x 36cm Felt gesso silverpoint tempera ink

felt/gesso's: because warmed gesso can be stippled into the felt, onto board, and if enough coats are applied it dries to a hard surface which can be drawn or painted on. 

Dubmail Allonby further out 1996  oil on board 49.5cm x 60cm  

 ‘My practice grows from my appreciation of our surroundings  and an interest in how I see them.   Themes such as light and reflections on water, the land and shoreline all reflect my environment. Drawing and painting, sometimes supported with slide studies, are the means of my visual research and they enable me to develop more worked paintings in tempera or in the medium of feltmaking.

Looking two ways canvas on board 2ft x 5ft.

 My practice stems simply from an appreciation of what and how I see.   Themes such as light and reflections,  water,   garden growth  all reflect my rural environment.      Drawing and painting are the means of visual research and these interpretations of what I see enable me to develop pictorial compositions,  sometimes as more worked Paintings in tempera and sometimes as Felts.    The characteristics of the drawing media used in the first studies, such as  close packed lines in pastel,  can often be of as much interest  in the making of the final  piece as the subject matter itself.

Ousebrig felt 2002

The felts are made from wool fibres which I dye to obtain colour similar to the palette of a painter.  The dyed fibres are then mixed by hand-carding small quantities to achieve variations and graduations, or overlaid to achieve effects similar to washes;  the fibres may also describe line as in drawing.     The hand felting process mats the fibres and therefore fixes the image in a compacted state.   I have developed work in this medium since 1979.

2003

SANDSTONE SEA Triptich Tempera l on boards 1999 2ft 6ins  x 5ft 6ins

Bassenthwaite Trees tempera  2002 

Slag-heap  2001

I work towards exhibiting but occasionally take on commissions for public places, welcoming the difference in thought and application to a brief which they generate.   Most recently commissioned, in 2003,  was a series of felts for a corridor at Bridligton Hospital based on drawings made at Sewerby Hall  gardens,  a favourite place to visit for the people of  Bridlington.

2004

Sedum Felt

Felt River Bank Reflections 2004

For Publications click here