Painting: Pastel, Acrylic and Ink on Paper. 2020

During the lockdown, nature was one of the only places that I felt truly safe. I spent a lot of time in this ancient forest in Welwyn Garden City with my sketchbook. There's something gratifying sitting amongst trees that have been there for thousands of years and it made me think about about nature as a constant throughout a section of human history.

The bright colours represent the warmth I feel from nature. They are simultaneously inspired by the place I'm seeing and the feeling the place is giving off. I try to capture something magical and otherworldly to give a sense of the planet not to be taken for granted; the same feeling as if seeing a forest for the first time.
I hope that the viewer can experience a sense of this warmth though the colours.

I painted this on the same day as teaching an online class about Monet's impressionist paintings. I was teaching the class about how Monet painted outside to try and capture the sense of a place and after the class I spent the next four hours in the forest getting this onto paper before finishing it at home. I used a mixture of oil pastels and paints to capture a childlike sense of awe in the movements. I wanted the materials I used to bring a liveliness into the work.