Desiderata

When confronted by a beautiful landscape - in fact, any landscape - admit defeat before you even begin and then you’re free to do as you like.

If you want perfection, give up painting and stick pins in butterflies instead.

The trick is not to get what’s out there onto your piece of paper; it’s to make people think that what’s on your piece of paper is out there.

The landscape is living and growing but the paints in the box are dead until your hand brings them to life.

You can’t learn the shape of a mountain by looking at it.  You have to paint it until your hand knows it better than your brain.

Blue is cool; brown is warm.  What more do you need to paint the world in all it’s moods?

No matter how fast you work, the light moves faster.  Stick with your original vision or you’ll be chasing after shadows.

Nothing in nature is regular until humanity gets hold of it.

So organise your painting by all means, but avoid regularity like the plague.

Green is the colour of hospital wards, anoraks and the boiled sweets that always get left in the bag.  Before you dip your brush in it, just bear that in mind.

If you don’t intend to paint every leaf, every blade of grass, why paint even one?

Whether it’s a lake, a mountain, a forest, or a valley, you’re actually painting the weather.

We’re so lucky that clouds billow just like pigment running through damp paper.

That the colour you choose creates a sensation in the brains of others; how powerful a tool is that?

Although there may be wide open spaces before you, every space in your painting is actually just another shape.

So what shape is the sky?

You can’t paint water, only the effect that other things have on it.

An inspiring landscape doesn’t make an inspiring painting; that is the job of your mind.

You can’t paint everything; you can only edit.

Landscapes devoid of humanity are truly empty.

Be wary of applying the finishing touch; you are not decorating a Christmas tree.

A painting is the shortest distance between two minds.