Painting More Freely: What I Brought Home from Norfolk

In the middle of June I spent several days in Norfolk on a landscape painting course with Big Sky Art, tutored by artist Jonathan Mulvaney. I went hoping to loosen up my painting and become a little less concerned with reproducing exactly what was in front of me. I came home feeling that I had made a real step in that direction.

It wasn't a sudden change of style. I had already been trying to paint more freely, but the course encouraged me to take that further.

Jonathan paints landscapes in a loose, impressionistic style, and his approach suited the direction in which I had already been trying to move. He encouraged me to simplify what I was seeing, think in blocks of colour and pay particular attention to getting the tones right.

Most importantly for me, he kept pushing me to be bolder — to get away from painting individual leaves and other details and concentrate instead on capturing the overall image and the experience of the landscape.

The first experiments

Beyond the Trees - acrylic on canvas board, 30x40cm

The first painting in which I felt something beginning to change was Beyond the Trees.

Rather ironically, it wasn't a Norfolk landscape at all. I worked from a photograph I had taken on Chipping Sodbury Common. Instead of becoming absorbed in the detail of the woodland, I concentrated on larger shapes and areas of colour and the contrast between the deep shade beneath the trees and the brilliant light beyond.

Summer Lane - acrylic on canvas board, 30x40cm

It was followed by Summer Lane, based on one of the narrow lanes near where we were staying in Norfolk in early evening sunlight. Again, I tried to see the foliage as blocks and marks of colour rather than individual branches and leaves.

Woodland Stream - acrylic on canvas board, 16x20in

I continued experimenting with Woodland Stream, a more complicated subject involving rocks, moving water, foliage and strong contrasts of light and shade from a photo from the Lake District. The challenge was to suggest the landscape without feeling I had to describe every part of it.

Painting at Brancaster Staithe

At Brancaster Staithe, where I worked partly en plein air on Norfolk marshes

Norfolk Marshes was very different. It was based on the landscape at Brancaster Staithe and was partly painted en plein air.

Here the enormous Norfolk sky, low horizon, water and changing weather became the subject. Painting outside also forces you to work differently: the light changes and there isn't the same opportunity to keep adjusting everything.

Norfolk Marshes - acrylic on canvas board, 30x40cm

Bringing it home

The real test was what happened when I got home. Would I continue painting this way or simply slip back into familiar habits?

I wanted to see whether I could carry the freer approach into my next paintings.

Into the Light - acrylic on canvas board 16x20 in

Into the Light returned to the contrast of dark woodland and brilliant light, while Spring Cascade presented the more complicated challenge of water, rocks and dense foliage. In both I tried to retain the simplified shapes, stronger colour and visible brushwork I had been exploring in Norfolk.

Spring Cascade - acrylic on canvas board 16x20 in

I'm still working out where all this will take me. I don't want every painting to look the same, and I certainly don't regard Norfolk as the moment when I suddenly discovered a new "style".

It feels more like another stage in a gradual process: becoming more confident about simplifying what I see, making stronger decisions and knowing what to leave out.

An unexpected postscript

There has since been a rather satisfying postscript to the Norfolk experience.

I entered the four paintings completed during the course — Beyond the Trees, Summer Lane, Woodland Stream and Norfolk Marshes — together with the two painted soon afterwards, Into the Light and Spring Cascade, for the 2026 Yate Art Open.

I was delighted — and more than a little surprised — when all six were accepted.

They will be exhibited at Yate Heritage Centre from 1 September. Seen together, they provide an unexpected record of a few weeks in which I began experimenting with a different way of painting and then tried to carry it forward once I was back in my own studio.

For me, that's probably the most valuable thing I brought home from Norfolk: not a formula for how I should paint, but greater confidence to experiment, simplify and see where the painting itself takes me.

My thanks to Jonathan Mulvaney for a thoroughly enjoyable and genuinely influential week, and to Big Sky Art for making it possible.

The six paintings featured here can all be seen at the 2026 Yate Art Open at Yate Heritage Centre from 1 September.