Painting at Wakehurst: Capturing the Colour and Energy of a Garden

There is something very different about painting directly from a landscape rather than working from photographs in the studio. For me, it isn't about trying to create a perfect representation of what I can see. It's about responding quickly – capturing colour, shape, atmosphere and, above all, the feeling of being in that particular place.

Recently, I spent a wonderful day at Wakehurst in Sussex, exploring the gardens and searching for inspiration for a new painting.

Finding inspiration in the garden

After wandering around the walled gardens, I eventually found the view that made me want to stop and paint.

What attracted me wasn't one particular flower or feature, but the wonderful variety within the planting. There were contrasts everywhere: delicate, wispy flowers alongside stronger ornamental forms, areas of deep shadow against light, and an abundance of shapes and colours competing for my attention.

These contrasts are often what excite me most when I'm looking at a landscape. Rather than trying to record every individual plant, I begin looking for relationships between forms, colours and spaces.

It is this visual energy that I want to take back into the studio.

Capturing the essence rather than the detail

When I paint on location, I work very differently from the way I work on a finished painting.

My studies are deliberately loose, quick and instinctive. I want to get colours, shapes and ideas down before I have too much time to think about them.

There is a freedom in working this way.

If I spend too long considering every mark, it is easy to become precious about the image and start trying to make things look "right". But I'm not interested in creating a realistic record of the garden.

I'm trying to capture its essence.

What did I notice first? Which colours felt important? Where were the strongest contrasts? How did my eye travel through the planting? What was it about this particular view that made me stop?

Those immediate responses can often tell me far more than a carefully rendered drawing.

Letting the materials have a say

I also deliberately choose materials that make it difficult to be too controlled.

One of these is ink, which I apply using a pipette. The ink drips, blobs, runs and occasionally goes somewhere I hadn't intended it to go – which is precisely why I like it.

Those accidental marks can create a liveliness that would be difficult to reproduce deliberately with a brush.

I then introduce one of my favourite – and perhaps slightly unexpected – materials: children's paint sticks.

I absolutely love using them.

They come in an extraordinary range of colours and give me the intensity and vibrancy I'm looking for. They're also wonderfully thick and slightly clumsy to work with. Once a mark goes down, I have to accept it and respond to it rather than continually correcting and refining.

For an artist who ultimately creates semi-abstract paintings, that element of unpredictability is incredibly useful.

From sketchbook to studio

The finished location study took no more than around half an hour, but that's all I needed.

The aim wasn't to leave Wakehurst with a finished piece of art. It was to gather enough visual and emotional information to begin something new.

Back in the studio, I'll use this study alongside photographs from the day as the starting point for a larger painting.

The photographs will help remind me of particular details, but the sketch has a different role. It contains those immediate decisions I made while actually sitting within the garden – the colours I noticed, the marks I made instinctively and the elements of the landscape that seemed important at that moment.

Together, these references allow me to move away from a literal representation of Wakehurst and towards something more personal and expressive.

Gardens as a source of inspiration

Gardens have become an increasingly important part of my painting practice.

I'm fascinated by the relationship between the natural and the cultivated: the way gardeners introduce structure and order while plants continue to grow, change and behave in their own unpredictable ways.

There is colour, pattern and geometry everywhere, but there is also movement and imperfection.

For me, that makes a garden an endlessly exciting subject for painting.

This quick study at Wakehurst is therefore only the beginning. I'll now take everything I've gathered back into the studio and see how those initial colours, shapes and marks develop into a new semi-abstract painting.

You can watch the accompanying video to see me working in the garden and the materials I use to capture the scene.

And keep an eye on my social media, where I'll be sharing the painting as it develops from this first spontaneous study into a finished work.