Recently I spent time travelling near Hay-on-Wye in Wales, sketching and painting the landscape directly from observation, immersed in its shifting weather and powerful sense of place. The Welsh border hills around this area carry a particular stillness — expansive, quietly dramatic, and constantly reshaped by passing light and weather systems.
Working on location, I focused on capturing mood rather than detail, responding instinctively to atmosphere, colour and the rhythm of the land. These sketches are small studies, but they hold something essential: the feeling of wind moving across slopes, mist gathering in the folds of the hills, and sudden breaks of light that transform the whole view in an instant. There is a constant tension between clarity and obscurity, where forms appear and dissolve almost simultaneously.
At one point I even caught sight of the most incredible deer — a brief, almost unreal encounter that felt completely part of the landscape itself, appearing and disappearing as quickly as the shifting light. Moments like this stay with you longer than the sketches sometimes do, quietly feeding into the work afterwards.
My approach remains deliberately loose and responsive, allowing paint and mark-making to reflect the uncertainty and energy of the landscape itself. I am less interested in describing the area than in translating how it feels to stand within it — vast, quiet, and emotionally charged.
This is the beginning of a new series developed from time spent near Hay-on-Wye. These studies will later evolve into larger oil paintings, where I will continue exploring atmosphere, light and memory on a broader scale, building on the impressions gathered directly in the field.