Hi, welcome to my first artist's blog. I am just returning to being an artist/teacher after several years of making a living in the 'real world' at St Mary's College, Blackburn. I have taken the leap and joined fellow artist Stephen Ormerod in a new venture, Art & Soul, which is a shared studio/gallery space where we can develop our own work, run workshops and publish/promote/facilitate the work of other artists. Following our opening weekend, we are settling into the environment and beginning to get a taste of how it can encourage people to 'free their creative spirit'.

I am revisiting the theme of skyscapes, which were a feature of my earliest soft pastel landscapes (just a few years ago!). This time though, I'm interested in the skyscapes independent of any landscape. I think that they have enough colour, mood, balance and composition to stand alone as subjects for paintings. Also, I think that as far as potential for experimenting with scale, different media and personal expression the skies the limit.

Below is the first of these, completed last week and I will be posting images of further work as it develops so please revisit this blog to see how I get on. Also take a look at Art & Soul and you'll get a flavour of what we're about. (P.S. we have a few things to iron out in the setting up of these blogs - so this is posted by me rather than Stephen, as stated below - I guess Rome wasn't built in a day!)