In 2022, I received the Cherry Kearton Medal and Award from the Royal Geographical Society. It was an unexpected and humbling honour. The citation spoke of my “ability to capture the uncapturable: the ever-changing play of light on landscape.” It’s hard to express what it means to be recognised in this way, especially for doing something that has brought me such delight over the years.
Finding ways to evoke the richness of the natural world through paint on canvas has been one of the great passions of my life. For over thirty years, I’ve worked at the meeting point of abstraction and figuration, trying to distil something of the fleeting beauty of landscape and light. My hope has always been that these paintings might invite others to see the world afresh and to find moments of stillness within it.
As my work became more spacious and filled with light, I found myself drawn north to the empty, luminous vastness of the Arctic. I made five journeys into the Arctic Circle, first to Finnish Lapland in search of the Aurora, and later to Greenland and Baffin Island as Arctic Artist in Residence with the Scott Polar Research Institute in 2018.
That residency was a life-changing experience. To spend time immersed in such a pure and elemental environment — made up of the simplest of ingredients: ice, water, rock and light — shaped not only what I paint but how I see. The silence and grandeur of that landscape continues to echo through my work.
It is my hope that these Arctic paintings allow others to glimpse and connect with the fragile beauty of this astonishing region of the world, on whose well-being we all depend.
The Cherry Kearton Medal has previously been awarded to figures such as Sir David Attenborough, Steve McCurry, Andy Goldsworthy and Tacita Dean. To be included among those names is an honour for which I feel deeply grateful.
