About the Artist
I love all things to do with the environment. I love horses and once owned my own pony Daniel. Painting has always been in the background of my life. But now in retirement it’s time to indulge my creative side. I feel privileged to have the opportunity to sell my work and by so doing, share my love for the outdoor world. Now that I suffer from MS, as I paint, I feel as if I’m revisiting places which because of mobility limitations I probably will never reach again. Painting in oils is a wonderful release from tension, when for a time I can melt away into memories and dream of better times.
I hope you enjoy my work and might return again to view, or to purchase if the painting touches something your own heart.
Who am I?
I love to paint in oils, and now that I am retired, I can follow my dream. Painting whatever touches me where ever I go. A painting can evoke all sorts of emotions. Something special to hang on your wall. Carefully hand-painted, a one-off, not mass-produced.
The painting below is not for sale, as it was done from memory and no longer exists in the real world. It is the home of my father’s mother, Mary Cowing. This is where my father grew up with his sisters and brothers. A very plain one-bedroomed miners' terraced house. Built in the mid 1800s by Joseph Cowen a Parliamentary MP and coal prospector in the Derwent Valley. He provided for my family a home with regular employment, and he was a major part of the growth of the tiny village of Rowlands Gill. Originally, the land belonged to the Earls of Strathmore. The ancestral family of our own Queen Elizabeth II of Gibside Estates. There has been a building on this site since the 1200s. The Estates and land are painted famously by Turner. Now owned by the National Trust who are carefully managing and restoring the buildings which Our Queen Mother knew very well when she was a child. Furniture from the Gibside Estate was removed to Glamis Castle in Scotland when the roof was removed from the old Hall to save taxes.
But those are the former high and mighty of our lovely village who are now long gone. The unassuming terraced houses over—looked by their Landlords is where my family lived their real life which was hard won with grit and sweat and blood working in the Lilley Drift Pit or the Lilley Brick Works. This is where my father was born, in tiny number 19 Cowen Terrace, and it was in the atmosphere of war and great change where he and his brothers and sisters grew up. From the years of the horse and carriage, right up to our first walk on the moon and beyond. Number 19, number 6, number 9, and number 24 Cowen Terrace are our ancestral homes in the Derwent Valley, near Newcastle upon Tyne.
