From the Brotherhood of Ruralists website:

I paint because I am happier painting than any other activity. Ever since I was a small boy and painted beside my father in our tiny warm kitchen I have enjoyed the seclusion and safety of my studio. When I am anywhere other than my studio, particularly with people, I am nervous and tense. My idea of happiness is to be in my studio and to know I have no commitments for at least three weeks.

I also enjoy the making of a painting from the first working drawing of my idea - the preparation of the board or canvas to the slow build up of the painting. I like to wake up in the morning knowing I am going to paint light falling on hair or to spend four days painting a beautifully graduated sky.

I like paint in tubes, the brushes and above all the smell of turps and linseed oil.

Finally, I paint my inner imaginative world and try to give my feelings and emotions a form. Once in every twenty paintings or so, a painting will give me a comeback and satisfaction which nothing else can match and these paintings point the way forward into still more exciting worlds.

This was the first of the artist talks at the Walker for the John Moores 24, and happened to fall on my first day of my 2nd student incarnation, so I had some free time to pop along after class.

Nicholas Middleton’s enty can be seen here: Scene from a contemporary novel. Oil on Canvas, 2006.
Very much enjoyed his description of both his entry and it’s cryptic title, which proves just as important. Once again I found myself repeating the phrase ‘the mediation of the image’ that I’d heard at the exhibition tour a week earlier.

Inevitably the questions that followed centered on his remarkably photo-realistic technique, which I was only too glad to make note of. To his credit, he squares up his works in the traditional way, despite working from photos & making many of the compositional decisions in pixels.

His ability impressed me greatly, and I think I’ve learned some tips from his brushwork which could simultaneously improve my own attempts and save me some time all at once. Depth of field in this painting seems to lend itself to brevity of brushwork, but without any loss of impact.

A fascinating article debunking some of the myths and preconceptions of transparent watercolour: http://www.handprint.com/.

My most recent completed painting. A December morning near a local farm.

Pastel 2005-2006.