The Great Confinement

Half a lifetime of painting landscapes has presented plenty of time to reflect on this inner need that has been sustained for so long

I beleive the impetus emerged primarly as a somewhat cathartic response to the awareness of the limits placed on individual freedoms within contemporary societies, particularly in environments shaped by heavy industries and its handmaiden, green poverty. My paintings are, in part, an expression of that tension— a kind of longing for a pastoral past that feels both familiar and irretrievable.

I grew up in Lancashire, in a home situated directly beneath the illistrated coal-fired power station. That landscape formed the backdrop of our earliest experiences. The windows framed not trees,flowers or grass, but of fabricated monoliths that produced goods, generated energy, and, in doing so, shaped identities and imposed boundaries on nature herself. It was a place where the environment, both physical and social, were sacrificed to the maufacture of utility .

There is a certain irony in this setting. The station, operated by a company called Manweb, stood as both a provider and exerciser of power. Its presence altered not only the physical landscape but also the sensory and psychological experience of those living within it. Smoke, noise, and scale became part of daily life. For many, it was an environmental imposition that reinforced a broader condition: a deeply unequal distribution of space, air, and agency.

While the forms of industry have evolved, the underlying structures remain. Systems of efficiency, control, and production have become more diffuse and complex, but their effects continue to shape how we live and relate to our surroundings. The landscapes may appear different and the smoke stacks may be gone, yet the conditions they reflect are not entirely new.

My work sits within this context. It explores the relationship between our industrial inheritance and the persistent idea of the pastoral. The paintings are not attempts to idealise the past, but to examine what has been lost, what remains, and what might still be reclaimed.

Painting serves as both a reflective and practical act. It is a way of working through these histories and of reasserting at least a semblence of agency— however modest— within them. A brush becomes a tool through which the spatial present and the past can be reconsidered, and perhaps, in some sense, recovered.