MOVING WITH THE LAND - PART 1: Finding my Way

Standing on a windswept mountain path, the last thing I want to do is wrestle a flying easel or pick insects out of wet oil paint.

For years, I felt guilty about that.

The art world often presents plein air painting as the ultimate test of a landscape artist. The image is familiar: an artist standing before a breathtaking view, easel planted firmly into the ground, spending hours faithfully recording what lies before them. It is a romantic vision, and one that captivated me as much as anyone else.

The problem was that I never seemed able to do it.

I tried everything. Watercolours, acrylics, water-soluble oils. Sketchbooks of every size and weight. New brushes. New paints. New systems. Every trip into the mountains felt like another opportunity to become the landscape artist I thought I was supposed to be.

Yet I rarely painted.

I would find a place to stop, unpack my equipment, make a few tentative marks, then feel the urge to move on. Unless it was lunchtime, I struggled to stay in one place for more than fifteen minutes. The sketchbooks remained half empty. Paint tubes stayed unopened. Brushes stayed dry.

Each time I returned home, I felt as though I had failed some unspoken test.

The artists I admired seemed capable of producing piles of work in the field. I came back with very little to show for my efforts. For weeks afterwards I often found it difficult to enter the studio. I told myself it was simply the end-of-holiday blues, but in reality it was something deeper. I felt as though I had returned empty-handed. With every trip, my confidence diminished and my sense of being an imposter grew stronger.

What I failed to recognise was that I was never returning empty-handed at all.

Every journey left me with a camera full of photographs. My pockets contained small sketchbooks filled with hurried line drawings, colour notes, weather observations and fragments of thought. I kept journals documenting places, conversations, conditions and experiences.

I wasn't failing to work in the landscape.

I was simply working in the landscape differently.

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The realisation arrived slowly. Throughout 2025 I spent more time reflecting on my practice, questioning not only what I paint but how I paint. Eventually I recognised something that now seems obvious: I prefer to move through the landscape rather than remain stationary within it.

That distinction changed everything.

I do not experience a mountain, forest or coastline as a single view framed before me. I experience it as a sequence of encounters. The shifting weather. The changing light. The exhaustion of a climb. The smell of wet earth. The sound of wind across open ground. The feeling of being immersed within something far larger than myself.

To stop and paint a single view often feels as though I am stepping outside the experience rather than deeper into it.

Ironically, the moment that finally clarified this came when I applied for Sky Landscape Artist of the Year.

After being encouraged by a member of the production team, I convinced myself that perhaps this was the opportunity to finally overcome my resistance to plein air painting. If I was serious about being a landscape artist, surely I should be able to paint outdoors under pressure.

As the weeks passed after submitting my application, the excitement gave way to dread.

I imagined myself surrounded by artists who possessed complete confidence in their outdoor practice while I struggled with something that seemed to come naturally to everyone else. I wasn't afraid of failing publicly; I was afraid that the experience would confirm a suspicion I had carried for years—that perhaps I wasn't a real landscape artist after all.

When the rejection email arrived, my overwhelming emotion was relief.

The pressure disappeared.

But something unexpected happened as well. For the first time, I found myself defending my own practice instead of apologising for it. I began to understand that my work succeeds not despite my dislike of plein air painting, but because of it.

I don't want to document the landscape in the moment. I want to absorb it.

The studio is where those experiences are filtered through memory, emotion and reflection. The paintings are not intended to be literal records of a place. They are an attempt to communicate what it felt like to be there.

I am not interested in reproducing a view. I am interested in translating an experience.

To do that, I need to walk. I need to explore. I need to lose myself in the weather, the terrain and the rhythm of the landscape. Only later, in the quiet of the studio, can I begin to understand what the landscape was really trying to tell me.

This realisation has shaped every aspect of my practice. The way I gather information, organise ideas and develop paintings all stem from this philosophy of movement rather than observation.

COMING SOON: This essay continues in PART 2: REMEMBERING THE LANDSCAPE, where I explore how those experiences become paintings in the studio.