West Pennine Moors.

Home Ground West Pennine Moors . Oil Painting . Explorations

 Painting outdoors in the West Pennines 

Small oil paintings of the beautiful West Pennine Moors. An area rich in diversity from the high Moorlands down through wooded valleys to old villages.

Old Greenlands Brinscall Sometimes or more often we see things by chance, at the end of a winters walk maybe...what is more it will be something quick that we hold as important for us in that moment some thing that affects us, the moment may be gathering dusk when the shadows turn silvery blue or the play of light across a field in summer caused by a cloud. These moments register with us as movement  as a sense of a place like you would sense another person who is close to you almost by your side but this feeling from the land is more fragile. 

Tockholes and Withnell.  When I paint outdoors here and when I used to walk here from Bolton over the moors going to Tockholes or past Great Hill to the Heights at Withnell it was like a day out by the sea. Yes of course you can see sea distanced across the plain;  you can also feel it in the constant freshness when the west wind blows and tries to beat at you and the space around you.  This is how the Terns must feel skimming in their 100’s by the roadside escaping high and away from the smog of Greater Manchester.

Roddlesworth Each season brings a fresh palette of colour. The woodlands here seem to fall or tumble down the slopes down from the high moors and into the valleys, here  some views have been stolen from us the views of bright water moving quickly or the old fields torn away by the gash of a quarry, so when I look here for a sense of this special place I see it as beautiful but damaged. The sky is a mirror to this.