OPENING ON THE 24th JULY 2026
My latest collection of works is inspired by the beauty and hope of Spring. From the coming and going of wild birds in the garden, to the local landscape.
This new series of works is an investigation of colour and light, exploring the ever changing colour schemes of my immediate surroundings throughout the day.
Some subjects call for different scales, from the intimate portraits of garden birds, to the vast landscape (Early Harvest) in which I needed more room to manoeuvre with the brush and colour.
I’m truly excited to share this next evolution of style and perception, ever curious to see where I’ll be led in the coming months and years.
A little taste of what's coming soon
Sails on a ship
This collection has also come with challenges, especially that of timing, knowing where to be at different times of day in order to continue with specific pieces.
The most challenging being Early Harvest, mainly due to the sheer size of the piece and the logistics of getting to the painting location with the necessary equipment and materials. This was made more interesting during high wind speeds, the huge painting acting as a sail on ship.
The final session on this piece was so memorable, I’d cycled against the wind to arrive, completely shattered in the mid morning heatwave, but then was pretty much blown all the way home without peddling, a very welcome experience after the toil!
Catching a train….
One of my highlights in this exhibition is the bird bath series, taking a single subject and painting it a number of times throughout the day was a real learning experience, teaching me to see the subtle changes in colour as the day rolled on.
There came a point that I realised and likened this process to catching trains. It took me back to my student days, swapping trains at various points to get to Canterbury from Doncaster.
What do I mean by this? Each painting was started at a particular time of day, with each piece I could only spend around 1.5 hours each session before the light and colour had changed too much to continue.
Thus each painting became a train that had to be caught at the right time, and there was a number of occasions when I didn’t quite time things right and missed opportunities to continue.
New friends come to stay
Another highlight from this latest body of work is something other than the actual paintings….a family of robins.
We have a lot of ivy, shrubbery and trees around both our front and rear gardens. Every year we have birds nesting and this spring I witnessed a family of robins rearing two chicks, they’ve since fledged their nest and are close by for now.
I’ve become so familiar with the robins that they now feed from my hand, a most treasured experience. Needless to say, the robins have featured in a number of the new works, adding a welcome blast of colour!
Battling distractions and revelling in the isolation
Working mainly in the garden, I found myself to be even more free than when working outdoors under the public eye, working to completely abandon myself to experimentation and pushing my use of colour into the unknown.
I have to admit, working from our little garden has been wonderful, but it also came with distraction from the coffee machine and biscuit tin!
In the end I started to buy decaf ground coffee after realising I was over doing it, I won’t dare to share the number of coffees consumed on one particular day. I’m pleased to say I’m now off the hard stuff and sleeping better….
With thanks
I’d like to say a huge thank you as always to my family, but especially my wife Sarah for her unwavering support, ideas and selflessness.
Thank you also in advance for your support, from words of encouragement to purchases, without you I could not continue in this beautiful life as an Artist.
Enjoy the collection and please do get in touch if I can help with anything at all.
Andrew Farmer ROI
andrewfarmerfineart@hotmail.com
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