I was pleased to be part of the group exhibition Mind Climate which featured four artists whose work focussed on ecological issues and revealing the often unseen undercurrents and shifts in perception and how our inner worlds are deeply connected to the people and the environment around us. I exhibited two works from my series of eight paintings ‘Art for Planet Earth’ – Protesting with a Paintbrush – about the current environmental crises and social issues facing our world: B

Every artist, writer, photographer, sculptor has a creative process. Carl Jung said that art was an innate drive that seizes the artist and makes them its instrument. I think that for many artists it can be quite a tricky thing to describe. Here’s me in the studio chatting about my creative process with two of my recent abstract paintings in the background.

ONE PAINTING. ONE STORY. A GREEN DESERT. It’s a heart break. Evolution has taken millions of years to create our tropical forests and it is taking human beings five minutes to destroy them. All the animals who live in these forests are totally dependent on this ecosystem: jaguars, tapirs, parrots, toucans, orangutans, golden tamarin monkeys, snakes, frogs, and many more. In this painting the animals are staring at the lumberjack with an axe and chainsaw who’s about to chop do

You may be interested (or, more likely, horrified) to learn that in 2017, at the bottom of the Pacific’s 10km deep Mariana Trench, considered the deepest part of the world’s oceans, a robotic submersible found, wait for it ... a tin of Spam, a bottle of Budweiser and plastic bags! Additionally, scientists discovered “extraordinary” levels of toxic pollution in the crustaceans living in the pitch-black waters of the Trench which go all the way up the food chain to whales, dolp

We’re so lucky aren’t we? We turn on the tap and water comes out. We flick a switch and the light comes on. Rubbish gets collected. Supermarkets are full of produce which trucks deliver along functioning rail and road networks. Most of us can heat our homes, feed our kids and fill up our cars. Our infrastructure works. At the moment. But things are unravelling: the planet is warming up year on year through man-made climate change; we have appalling levels of sewage in our wat

Six out of thirteen of the great whale species are currently classified as endangered. This painting is a story about our beautiful gentle giants of the sea – the flash of a tail, a plume of vapour, breaching the surface – an unforgettable sight of these magnificent creatures. But in my painting the whale on the left is swallowing plastic pollution as it feeds. The middle one is trapped in fishing nets. On the right you can see barrels of toxic waste. The whales are at risk f

Who is burning down the Amazon rainforest? The story in this painting is just one of the ways humanity is destroying the planet: the torching of a rich and complex ecosystem. On one side there’s an evil looking bloke who’s the culprit, representing the money and profit to be gained by this devastation. A box of matches, a flaming stick, burn it down, hey ho, who cares? On the left is what’s lost in this mass of smoke and flame: an indigenous man looking at the loss of his hom

Common experiences of astronauts were a feeling of awe for planet Earth, a profound understanding of Earth’s fragility, the indivisibility of human, plant and animal worlds and a sense of responsibility for taking care of our home, this glowing, blue jewel in the darkness of space filled with stars, planets and swirling nebulas. The woman in the painting is cradling the Earth, highlighting its beauty and vulnerability, and gazing down with sorrow, concern and tears for the th

Migration is very much in the news nowadays but it’s been an issue for hundreds of years: even the Romans also had debates about what to do with migrants. Now people are fleeing not only war, oppression and famine, but the effects of climate change have increasingly become a significant driver of people seeking asylum, often referred to – somewhat clinically – as ‘environmental displacement’. In this painting I needed to express the link of migration to global problems and ‘t

I doubt many visitors to my exhibition will remember the pea-soup smog that enveloped London in 1952. This painting is a story about how much pollution is pumped into the atmosphere by coal burning power stations – then and now. The noxious smog in ’52 brought home that the pollution wasn’t escaping and people died from the toxic fumes. Today burning fossil fuels and releasing their carbon content is one of the major contributors to air pollution and climate change, heating t

We all love a good story. And the tale and archetypal imagery of Kali Yuga, the time of darkness, from Hindu cosmology is as relevant to our world now as it was when it was told in 3rd century BCE. The Four Yugas describe the cycles of the divine, celestial, gods’ and earth’s ages through millennia – the Dark Ages, the Age of Enlightenment, the Golden Age, the Iron Age as we might call them. And here we are in the Kali Yuga, the modern Dark Ages, as described in my painting.

Art for Planet Earth was exhibited at Yardley Arts in Yardley Hasting in November. It’s a beautiful Old School Hall now used as a spacious, light-filled gallery in the centre of one of the country’s prettiest villages. And superbly run by Polly Parrish and her hard-working team. We had a super Opening Reception with about 100 visitors and lots of appreciative visitors during the month. I held six art workshops for children from local schools and we then exhibited all their fa

It was an absolute joy to show the children around Art for Planet Earth and explain the meaning, inspiration and creative impulses which led me to paint these canvases. It is one of my passions to work with children and to start a conversation about how we are damaging our planet and how we can all create a better and brighter future. Children are all so open, engaged and interested in the artworks and the message. They get it! Unlike many adults who prefer to stay within the

Attached is a video for Art for Planet Earth

Protesting with a paintbrush!

“It’s a concern inside each one of us nowadays about what’s happening to the planet: we can all physically feel and see the change in the world. Art is my way of protesting: I protest with a paintbrush, as writers and poets do with their pens”. I’m thrilled to be exhibiting Art for Planet Earth, my eight paintings on climate change and the global environmental ‘tipping points’ the worldis facing: the effect of burning fossil fuels, global warming, warming oceans and melting g

The exhibition of my new series of large canvases on climate change and environmental damage highlights the indivisibility of human and natural worlds and protests about humanity’s destruction of our ecosystems. It gets my frustration about the state of the world onto canvas and I hope creates a conversation about what we can do as individuals to take responsibility for our world, our home. And a call to create a brighter future. Art is the highest form of hopeGerhard Richter

Anther cracking show at RooftopArts with an impressive standard of work from local Northants artists. I exhibited my two new summer works ‘A Country Walk’ and ‘Welland Valley’.