The link between paintings and journeys is a close one. Both are forms of exploration.

Every painting involves a plunge in to the unknown and brings forth its own set of challenges. You have to choose a scene and then decide on your composition. You have to select the right colours so they express the mood or feeling you want to convey. You have to train your eye to perceive tones in order to get the right balance in your painting. You have to find a way to connect the different elements to create a pleasing effect..

Having said that, if I have learnt one thing from my own dabbling it is that much of art is in the process. You can start out with one set of ideas and then see them evolve in to something completely different. Without even planning it, for example, I sometimes find my paintings take on a whiff of the supernatural or even the surreal.

Rather than fight these wellsprings from the deep, I find it best just to do what I do on my travels and that is go with the flow. Your muse usually knows what is best…

Travel with its association with adventure and discovery and the allure of the new has always proved irresistible to me – and, in the back of my mind, there is always the hope that I will be sufficiently inspired by the scenes I see to want to come back home and paint them (there are other reasons I seek out changes of place, of course, many of them anthropological. I want to study the flora and fauna although I tend to look at even this through the eyes of an artist marvelling, for example, at the beauty of a particular bird I have just successfully identified).

Such journeys by car, or even by foot, can produce insights and perceptions you would not get if you just sat at home all your life. They can provide stimulus, enrichment and a sense of achievement.

The urge to record these new discoveries are part of my motivation.

I try not to over plan my trips or put myself under the guidance of others (although, occasionally one needs to do just that) but, rather, just follow my nose and see where it leads me.

As Lawrence Durrell put it, so beautifully, in his book, Bitter Lemons:

“Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will – whatever we may think. They flower spontaneously out of the demands of our nature – and the best of them lead us not only outwards in space, but inwards as well. Travel can be one of the most rewarding forms of introspection….”

Here are some paintings inspired by my own voyages of discovery…

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