From Garden to Canvas: Creating a New Collection in My French Studio

Spending an extended period in my studio in France gives me the opportunity to immerse myself completely in painting. On this particular visit, I had four wonderfully productive weeks developing a new group of paintings, all inspired by gardens I had visited and sketched during the previous summer and autumn.

Although each painting begins with a real place, what happens between that first encounter and the finished canvas is a process of remembering, interpreting and transforming.

Beginning with the experience of a garden

I spend a great deal of time visiting gardens and working in my sketchbooks.

When I'm there, I don't try to create a detailed, finished representation of the landscape. Instead, I gather information: colours, shapes, patterns, interesting relationships and the things that particularly capture my attention.

These studies then return to the studio with me.

Sometimes several months can pass before I begin the finished painting, but that doesn't concern me. In fact, the distance can be useful.

The sketchbook gives me the information I considered important when I was there, while my memories retain something less tangible – the atmosphere and feeling of experiencing the place.

From these, I can begin transforming a real garden into a semi-abstract painting.

Water lilies, reflections and architecture at Kew

One of the paintings I worked on in France was inspired by the Waterlily House at Kew Gardens.

The water lilies themselves are beautiful, but I was equally fascinated by the architecture surrounding them.

Above the plants and water is an ornate iron structure containing repeating circular forms. These patterns are reflected in the water below, creating an intriguing relationship between the physical structure, its reflection and the plants themselves.

I incorporated this circular pattern into the painting.

I particularly like the ambiguity this creates. The pattern exists on the two-dimensional surface of the canvas, yet it can also suggest something above the water or reflected within its depths.

This interplay between what is observed and what is constructed is something I increasingly enjoy exploring in my work.

Finding geometry within a place

Geometry has become an important part of my painting process.

My paintings often begin with an underpainting based upon a geometric pattern, and wherever possible I derive that pattern from the location itself.

Another painting in this collection was inspired by the Palm House at Kew Gardens. This time, I looked down rather than up for the underlying geometry.

The floor contained a circular motif that became the starting point for the underpainting.

Once the subsequent layers of paint are introduced, that geometry may be partially hidden, altered or fragmented. But it remains within the painting, providing an underlying structure.

I find this fascinating because when we think about gardens, our attention naturally goes towards flowers and plants. Yet patterns exist everywhere – in petals and leaves, certainly, but also in paths, buildings, glasshouses, ironwork and the structures humans introduce into cultivated landscapes.

Gardens beyond Kew

The collection wasn't inspired by one garden alone.

Another painting developed from a visit to Wakehurst, where I had found a beautiful spot beside the water surrounded by flowers and mature planting.

I also worked from a garden I had visited in Normandy, demonstrating how different landscapes and garden traditions gradually become part of the same evolving visual language within my work.

The geographical location is important as a starting point, but I'm not trying to make paintings that function as records of individual gardens.

Instead, I'm interested in what these places have in common: colour, pattern, growth, structure and the relationship between human intervention and the natural world.

Plastic, nature and contradiction

Some of my paintings also incorporate found or reclaimed plastic.

This introduces another layer to my exploration of our relationship with nature.

We surround ourselves with messages about sustainability and environmental responsibility, yet plastic remains embedded in so many aspects of everyday life – including gardening, horticulture and the ways in which we cultivate and consume plants.

Sometimes the wording printed on a piece of discarded plastic creates an unexpected juxtaposition when it is incorporated into a landscape painting.

I find those contradictions interesting.

The plastic doesn't simply become another collage material. It carries its previous purpose and language into the painting, creating a small reminder of the complicated relationship we have with the environments we value.

More than a picture of a garden

Ultimately, these paintings aren't really about reproducing gardens.

The garden gives me a framework within which I can explore much broader ideas: our relationship with nature, environmental responsibility, pattern, geometry, colour and the emotional experience of being within a beautiful landscape.

Working in my French studio gives me the space to bring all those strands together.

A sketch made months earlier at Kew, Wakehurst or in Normandy can sit beside a photograph. A pattern noticed in an iron roof or tiled floor can become an underpainting. A piece of discarded plastic can introduce another meaning entirely.

Gradually, these different fragments become a new painting.

And although the finished canvas may have travelled a long way from the garden where it began, something of that first experience remains embedded within it – beneath the colour, pattern and layers of paint.

You can watch the accompanying video to step inside my French studio and see some of these garden-inspired paintings as they developed.