Acrylic on canvas-covered board, 2023, 30 x 30 cm. Example frame only.

Painted in the slightly chilly studio on a late September afternoon, listening to the Naked Neanderthal by Ludovic Slimak – cannibalism – or was it? – 120 thousand years ago, sudden climate warming to warmer than today, temperate forests covering what had been chilly plains full of prey herds. Here’s our temperate forest with our hunter, in Scotland’s old oak woods at Kinclaven, not a cannibal though he does like red meat. Kernel, many-layered, from our walk at Kinclaven, Perthshire, in ancient woodland near the Tay.

Acrylic on canvas covered board, 2023, 17.8 x 12.7 cm. Sample frame only.

This one is so tiny! It’s very interesting to work on such a small scale.

Acrylic on canvas covered board, 2023, 20.3 x 20.3 cm.

Painted over many layers of abstract modulation and meditation, this resolved itself from our walk at Kinclaven, Perthshire, in ancient woodland near the Tay. It is already in an off-white frame.

Acrylic on panel, 25.4 x 20.3 x 1.9 cm. From our summer walk at Kinclaven, Perthshire, in ancient woodland near the Tay.

The deep edges are painted a similar colour to the mix of blue and purple in this painting, and Kindling is scratched into thick paint at the bottom.

Acrylic on board, 2023, 25 x 10 cm

At the moment I like to make at least two versions of a painting, starting with a watercolour. In this case there is a water colour (below in the sketchbook), this small one on board, a slightly bigger one on canvas, and the big one.

Acrylic on board, 20 x 15 cm, 2023

This is done on a small board and is a spin-off from all the figures I am painting on the bigger pictures, but I feel all these, including the watercolours in the sketchbooks, are works in their own right. This is every Scot(sman), trudging across the sad landscape of climate change, global inequality and all the other ills that mankind has visited on itself. Or he’s just a guy on a golden hillside of bracken in autumn.

My son-in-law and good friend, Scott Donaldson, is a great model, his clothes are always interesting and the current hairstyle is nice to paint!