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Lodge: Weetwood Villa
Acrylic on canvas 41 x 51 cm 2025

Elected a member of the NEAC

I am delighted to announnce that in June I was elected a member of the New English Art Club (NEAC).

This means a very great deal to me - the NEAC was founded in the late nineteenth century to bring the influence of modern French painting to this country, and past members include my painting heroes Sickert, Ginner and Gore. The NEAC continues to mount a stimulating and vibrant annual exhibition combining the work of members with an open submssion (from which I have been lucky enough to be selected this year and last year).

Lodges

This year I'm working on a large series of paintings, in acrylic rather than oil, showing the Victorian gatehouses that pepper this part of Leeds. These have a strange architectural style which combines miniaturism with extravagance - it's sometimes termed gingerbread architecture. They are a reminder of a time when Headingley was home to large houses belonging to the industrialists and bankers of Leeds, who used these gatehouses to show off their wealth.

The houses and their grounds are mostly gone now, replaced by streets of semis and terraces, but many of the gatehouses remain - particularly along the A660 (Woodhouse Lane / Headingley Lane / Otley Road), and Weetwood Lane.

I hope to find some way to present the finished paintings together at the end of the project, either in an exhibition or a printed catalogue (or both). In the mean time, one of these Lodge paintings will be on show in the Mall Galleries, London in June, in the NEAC Annual Exhibition.

Completed paintings so far:

Lodges
Acrylic on canvas and board, variously 41 x 51 cm, 23 x 30 cm, 61 x 76 cm, 30 x 41 cm, 46 x 61 cm, 51 x 76 cm, 2025

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