Each painting is an original in watercolour, gouache, and 24 carat gold, approximately 28 x 21 cms in size.
To commission an illuminated letter, simply let me know which letter you’d like, and your preferences for imagery, for instance, wildlife, foliage, or flowers.
If you’re happy for me to design freely, simply choose a letter, or combination of letters, and I’ll take care of the rest.
The process begins with research, followed by drawing, painting, and finally gilding.
This typically takes 4/5 weeks to complete.
Watercolour, gouache and 24 carat Gold on 425gms Bockingford paper.
2025
Watercolour, gouache and 24 carat Gold on 425gms Bockingford paper.
2025
Watercolour, gouache and 24 carat gold on 425gms Bockingford paper.
28 × 21 cms
2025
Watercolour, gouache and 24 carat Gold on 425gms Bockingford paper.
2025
Watercolour, gouache and 24 carat gold on 425gms Bockingford paper.
28 × 21 cms
2025
Watercolour, gouache and 24 carat Gold on 425gms Bockingford paper.
2025
Watercolour, gouache and 24k gold
28 x 21 cms
Watercolour, gouache and 24 carat Gold on 425gms Bockingford paper.
2025
Watercolour, gouache and 24 carat gold on 425gms Bockingford paper.
28 × 21 cms
2025
Watercolour, gouache and 24 carat Gold on 425gms Bockingford paper.
2025
Watercolour, gouache and 24 carat gold on 425gms Bockingford paper.
2025
Watercolour, gouache and 24 carat gold on 425gms Bockingford paper.
2025
Watercolour, gouache and 24 carat gold on 425gms Bockingford paper.
2025
Watercolour, gouache and 24 carat gold on 425gms Bockingford paper.
2025
Watercolour, gouache and 24 carat gold on 425gms Bockingford paper.
2025
Watercolour, gouache and 24 carat gold on 425gms Bockingford paper.
2025
Watercolour, gouache and 24 carat gold on 425gms Bockingford paper.
2025
Watercolour, gouache and 24 carat gold on 425gms Bockingford paper.
2025
Watercolour, gouache and 24 carat gold on Bockingford paper.
21 x 28 cms
2025
Watercolour. 2021
56 x 76 cms
Pencil on paper
29.5 x 20.5 cms
2021
Pencil on paper
29.5 x 20.5 cms
2021
Drawing. 2021
10 x 15 cms
Watercolour. 2021
10 x 15 cms
Watercolour 56 x 76 cms
Pencil on paper 20.5 x 29.5 cms
A series of drawings and paintings begun during the Covid19 UK lockdown in 2019, which explore the extent to which the history of an interior might be insinuated in the pared back geometries revealed during the initial stages of renovation.
Oil on wood panel
7 x 9 inches
Ivie = Precious jewels of inestimable value
oil on canvas, 2017
20 x 16 inches
Portraits for NHS Heroes is an art project held in the United Kingdom during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.
Artist Thomas Croft, at a loss as to what to paint during lockdown, put out an offer on Instagram on 4 April, saying he would paint a free portrait for the first National Health Service (NHS) worker to reply
On the 22nd April inspired by what I believe to be a really great cause, I offered my services too as a portrait artist on instagram, and with a few minutes was contacted by Claire Appleton in Cumbria, a community occupational therapist and team lead of the rapid response team in Penrith.
Oil on canvas, 2018
60 x 40 inches
Oil on canvas, 2011
16 x 20 inches
Oil on panel, 2018
10 x 10 cms
Oil on hardwood Panel, 2008
10 x 10 cms
oil on canvas, 2007
22 x 18 inches
oil on hardwood panel, 2009
10 x 10 cms
Oil on hardwood panel, 2008
10 x 10 cms
Charcoal on grey cartridge, 2008
18 x 13 inches
Oil on canvas, 2007
18 x 18 inches
Pencil, 2006
15 x 10.5
Ink on cartridge paper, 2008
12 x 8.5 inches
Study for a portrait
Lithograph, 2008
28 x 20 inches
Oil on Panel, 2016
11 x 9 inches
Oil on Panel, 2018
10 x 8 inches
Pencil on paper
29.5 x20.5 cms
20.5 x 29.5 cms
Pencil on paper
(detail)
Oil on panel, 2019
8 x 10 inches
(detail)
I have an enduring love of watercolour painting. As I started my series of boxer’s heads back in 2006, I was struck by how unlikely a choice this ‘genteel’ medium might seem in the depiction of violence, pain and struggle.
Watercolour, 2009
26 x 18 inches
Watercolour, 2008
26 x 18
Oil on gessoed oak panel
4 x 6 inches
10 x 14 cms
Oil on gessoed oak panel.
4 x 5.5 inches.
Oil on gessoed panel
4 x 5.5 inches
Oil on gessoed oak panel
4 x 5.5 inches
Oil on gessoed oak panel.
4 x 5.5 inches.
Oil on gessoed panel
4 x 5.5 inches
Oil on gessoed oak panel
4 x 5.5 inches
Oil on gessoed oak panel
4 x 5.5 inches
Oil on gessoed oak panel
4 x 5.5 inches
‘’a painting made from a selected film-still might begin to hint at the possibility of an alternative narrative, one that isn’t actually chronicled in the film itself’’. Sheila Wallis
23 x 12. 5 cms
Oil on oak panel. 12.5 x 23 cms.
This small oil painting on oak panel isolates a still from director William Oldroyd’s 2016 film ‘Lady Macbeth’. Removed from the film’s narrative progress as well as its technical processes, the painting offers a silent visual revelation that subtly alters the range of potential readings.
The formal and dramatic concerns of the painters Johannes Vermeer and Vilhelm Hammershøi are acknowledged by the film’s makers, coinciding with my own interest in how light and shadow can be creatively manipulated to suggest, through formal restraint, a sense of time suspended in space.
Oil on oak panel. 2020
4.5 x 9 inches
Oil on canvas
20 x 16 inches
oil on canvas, 2018
60 x 30 inches
Oil on canvas, 2018
36 x 60 inches
(detail)
work in progress
Oil on Panel, 2019
5 x 10 inches
(detail)
Oil on panel, 2009
20 x 20 cms
Oil on canvas, 2009
48 x 60 inches
Watercolour, 2019
20 x 16 cms
Oil on canvas, 2008
48 x 60 inches
Oil on Panel, 2010
12 x 9.5 inches
Oil on canvas, 2007
48 x 60 inches
Oil on canvas, 2019
60 x 48 inches
(detail)
Oil on canvas, 2008
60 x 48 inches
oil on paper
2024
26 × 21 cms
Watercolour, 2019
76 x 56cms
Watercolour
76 x 56 cms
Watercolour
76 x 56cms
Watercolour
76 x 56 cms
Watercolour
76 x 56 cms
Watercolour
76 x 56 cms
Watercolour
76 x 56 cms
If it is something of a truism that the artist invites the audience to reassess subjects that are - for one reason or another - overlooked or disregarded, then bereavement and mourning must surely qualify for attention. And this is the context in which I propose that a reconsideration of Victorian post-mortem photography is critically important.
It is not always apparent to the casual observer that the subjects in Victorian post mortem photographs are dead and not simply asleep. In a curiously synchronistic comment, Marlene Dumas observes ‘Images don’t care. Images do not discriminate between sleep and death’. (Shiff 2008.147)
In the search to uncover and explore possible new meanings within the post-mortem photograph, I find the need to re-photograph the photograph (requiring movement on my part as I press the shutter) before I can begin to consider how its subject matter – originally taken at a point when grief must have predominated over mourning - might be translated into another medium. And not just another material medium. The translation must also begin to speak of the redemptive power of mourning, testifying to the extent that art addresses its subject in the context of multiple legibility. Re-photography permits a search for something that I believe to be latent - unfulfilled - in the image. It gives back to photography that which belongs to it - a ‘rendering unto Caesar’ as it were, of its own visual currency, back to the methodological authority to which it properly belongs, according to its own conditions and under its own terms. Re-photography is the visual trope that permits me to draw out more explicitly the trembling – shuddering? – of the living subjects as they wait out the exposure time whilst propping and supporting their deceased relative. Re-photography appears to propel the ‘original’ image into a new, unpredictable dimensionality, creating a heightened sense of presence that migrates into my drawn or painted transcriptions.
Extract from Transfiguring Bereavement, Sheila Wallis, 2014
Compressed Charcoal, 2014
112cms x 77 cms
Watercolour, 2014
101.6 x152.4 cms
Compressed Charcoal, 2014
112 x 77 cms
Compressed Charcoal, 2014
112 x 77 cms
Compressed Charcoal, 2014
112 x 77 cms
Compressed Charcoal, 2014
112 x 77 cms
Watercolour, 2014
101.6 x 152.4 cms
Watercolour, 2014
101.6 x152.4 cms
Watercolour, 2014
101.6 x152.4 cms
Watercolour, 2014
101.6 x152.4 cms
oil on oak panel
7 x 9 inches
2022
‘Hanter-nos’ is the Cornish word for midnight, the time at which, on the 12th April 1912, the sailing vessel Mildred ran aground in dense fog off Gurnard’s Head in Cornwall. My painting is a transcription from a remarkable photograph of the wreck in the Gibson and Sons of Scilly Collection, now held at the Royal Museums Greenwich.
In these historic archival images, the Gibson’s were primarily concerned with straightforward photojournalism. In our own time many of their maritime images might be perceived as hinting at the unquiet and insecure relationship that we increasingly often recognise in our own relationship with the natural world. This is the metaphor that I set out to explore in a painting that employs the ossified colours, tones and textures of scrimshaw in making a painting of a doomed vessel that happened to be loaded with coal slag. Happily, no lives were lost in this grounding, the fog being heavy but the sea remaining calm enough for the captain and crew to escape safely. So despite the apparently desolate scene, I trust that a suggestion of hope might remain in a painting that treats the perilous relationship we have with our climate.
Lithograph and watercolour on paper
56 x 76 cms
Drypoint
watercolour
76 x 56 cms
