BRISTOL PAINTING PROJECT
The Bristol Plein Air Project is an ongoing series of original oil paintings of Bristol, painted directly from life on location throughout the city.
“The places may be familiar, but I am not the same painter”
Full circle
I started my plein air painting journey in April 2012 and right from the start I wanted to learn how to paint like my heroes - Sargent, Freud, Forbes and Zorn, so I painted from life, obsessively, every day.
For five years, I worked on Location in Bristol, London, Bath and Cornwall, learning the fundamentals through trial and error. I painted small pieces in changing light and unpredictable weather. There is no better way to learn about colour, light and tone, than by working directly in front of your subject.
In 2017 I moved on, exploring studio painting - working up studies on a larger scale and introducing photography as a reference tool. I used fish-eye lenses and convex mirrors to capture incredibly wide fields of view, both indoors and out. I painted portraits, imagined landscapes and explored painting from memory. All exciting, all interesting, all valuable experience that helped me progress as an artist.
Delving into botanical gardens in 2025 and producing my largest and most complex works to date felt like coming full circle - from small plein airs, to massive, complex studio works. It felt like I’d arrived at the final subject matter to finish the first chapter in my painting story. I had tackled all the main genres that mattered to me, so my thoughts turned back home, back to where it all started.
Bristol.
I’m returning to the city’s streets, parks and viewpoints with a sharper eye, a whiter beard and everything I have learned since those first paintings in 2012.
The Downs, September 2012
Five months after I began working en plein air, this was the first painting that I was really proud of.
Clifton Suspension Bridge, November 2012
This was one of the first times that I felt I truly captured the light that I was seeing. What a thrill!
Bristol, from life
The paintings in this project are made entirely on location. I’ll be working small and quickly, responding to the light, weather and atmosphere of a particular day rather than working from photographs back in the studio.
Each painting is a record of a place and a moment in time that can never quite be repeated - a cold morning in the Avon Gorge, light falling across a street in Clifton, the harbourside on a grey afternoon.
Many familiar views that I have walked past hundreds of times, suddenly look new and deliciously paintable with fresh eyes.
I am interested in the ordinary moments that make up a city, not just the famous landmarks, but the quieter corners that resonate with me and represent the Bristol I know and love.
Back where it began
There is something satisfying about returning to the same streets with fourteen years of experience behind me.
The paintings I am making now are inevitably different from those I made when I first started. The places may be familiar, but I am not the same painter.
This project is therefore partly an exploration of Bristol, but it is also an exploration of how I’ve grown.
I want to see what happens when I return to the subject that taught me to paint, armed with everything I have learned over 14 years.
Follow the project
I will be painting Bristol from life regularly throughout the year and documenting the paintings as they are made.
Follow along on Instagram to see where I set up my easel, watch the paintings develop and see each new painting when it is finished.
