Jonathan Smith West Yorkshire, United Kingdom

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I am a self-taught, semi-professional painter, based on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales. My work is created in oils and seeks to reflect my personal responses to the landscapes around me. My love of the light and the landscape are reflected in my work as are environmental concerns.

I spend as much of my time as possible in the woods and on the moors that make up the Yorkshire Dales. Here I will sketch and photograph landscapes, weather effects and views that I then use in my studio to create completed versions in oil. I am heavily influenced by the ideas of John Carlson, especially in the sense of using memory to create the painting.

Once I find a motif, or view, or weather effect that interests me, I will take out sketchbook and camera to record the necessary images. But, more importantly, I take some time to just "look" at the scene and try to internalise colours, forms and effects. Added to these new memories are my own personal response to the scene - joy, concern, fear, serenity. Once back in the studio, the sketches and source material act as a framework to create the forms and space on the canvas but, once that is done, I use my own memory of the moment to create the image. In this way, I try to create a very personal response too the image I am producing, and hope to convey my feelings to the viewer.

Ultimately, I try to express my love of landscape and of light, my love of the weather and the beautiful. landscape of the county of my birth and, I strive to create art that has humanity, as an antidote the the often sterile and loveless world we have created for ourselves, including that of the arts.

Following on from the COP 26 conference in 2021, I have extended my thoughts to ideas of climate change and the damage that we have wrought upon the natural world, and the landscapes that I love so much. My work this year intends to focus largely on environmental and climatic issues as a way of raising awareness in my own small way.