About Me

I work as a professional artist from my studio ( see photos ) in the village of Cilgerran, on the borders of Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire here in West Wales. When I'm not in my studio painting it's usually because I'm out with my camera or my paints, somewhere in the local area, working on ideas and gathering reference material for new work.

I have always had a fascination with wildlife, nature and the outdoors, and growing up on a dairy farm in West Wales I spent much of my time as a child roaming the fields and woodlands sketching and painting anything that would stay still long enough to allow me to do so.

However, after leaving school, I left home too, and my first job was working as a gamekeeper in Oswestry Shropshire, which I did for two years. Then, changing direction completely I headed back to college to complete an apprenticeship as a plumber and heating engineer. Over this early period in my life I used to paint and draw when I could, but in truth there were never enough hours in the day, and other thing occupied my spare time.

Craving adventure I changed career path again in my early twenties, and I spent the next five years serving in the Royal Navy, which unfortunately again allowed little time for indulging in my passion for art. I left the forces in the late nineties, which is when I left the UK too, and travelled south to New Zealand to stay and work for a year. As these thing have a habit of doing, one year led to two, and so on, and I stayed south of the equator for the nest six years, living in both New Zealand and Australia. Fortunately I had more time on hand now, and this is where I was once again able to take up the brush and study art. I moved back to the UK, and back to Wales in 2004.

My studio paintings are worked up from small oil painting sketches painted out in the field using a pochade box, and from photographs I've taken on my adventures in Wales, most often a combination of both. You can see from the paintings on this website that I paint a variety of subjects, and although predominantly a landscape artist I do undertake some pet portrait work.

I strive in all of my paintings to create a unique snap shot of a scene, not one that is photographic and rigid, but one that is painterly and full of marks and brush-strokes that impart a little bit of myself into each artwork.

I work both on a commission basis and as a freelance artist, by that I mean that I paint the subjects that I choose to paint, but I also accept commissions, both landscape and pet portrait.

I hope you enjoy looking around my website, and if you have any questions about me or my work don't hesitate to get in touch ~ Chris

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