FINGER LICKIN’ GOOD. 48 x 48 inches. Oil on canvas. Thick, sumptuous strokes of oil paint help give this work a three dimensional look. Glance to the side of this four foot painting and you will feel strangely like you’re underneath this vintage 1960’s iconic sign. Painted to look as though light is shining through the bucket, the composition is graphic and full of Californian sunshine. The sky is a consistent King’s blue, but applied with a large decorators brush to provide texture to the background.

Salton Sea is an abandoned lake polluted by a farming accident. Everything in the surrounding area has been left to rust or rot and the few surviving shops appear to cling-on to life. This laundrette is as beautiful as it is rundown. The “N” in the sign washed out pink from red over time. In this 6’x4’ oil I wanted to capture the eerie stillness and sense of an abandoned area, parched by the dessert sun, concrete bleached white - all contrasting against a cheery cobalt blue sky. The painting looks fairly photographic from afar, but is painted loosely in thick, bold brushstrokes. The resulting canvas is a fairly epic scene one feels they can step in-to.

The pretty pink neon masks the filthy exterior of this iconic Las Vegas hotel at night. By day, the facade of the building is as grubby as the sticky-carpet interior and abundant gamblers. I think this makes for a more interesting concept. The composition in this 48×48” painting uses a significant amount of negative space which allows the viewer to fall into the abundant Nevada sky.

Foster’s “Old Fashion” Freeze. 40 x 40 inches. Oil on canvas. I love this evocative old sign. It conjures the taste of soft-serve creamy godliness without actually really showing it. Painted in golden hour light, the evening feels heavy with heat as the mountains glow turquoise and gold. Sandwiched between the sign and the mountain are several impressionist palms painted with impasto strokes all pinging with vibrant colors.

This 48 x 48 canvas allowed me to build up layers of paint to create textures and linear forms that add complexity and richness to an otherwise simple composition. Beneath the fiery orange is a base of bright pink that gives the work a shimmer. The cream coloured wall lit by strong sun is painted in lead-tin yellow - contrasting with the ochre of the side of the building in shadow. The windows have minimal detail, but the contrasty lighting gives a three-dimensional feel to the painting that looks weirdly realistic.

I have a relatively healthy obsession with this gorgeous water tower. It stands like a centurion on duty in the little town of Campbell, California. When my wife, Jules, came to work in California she stayed on her own in this town and the tower felt like a protective beacon looking after her. Because of the tower’s height, it attracts a variety of light - so I’ve drawn and painted this object many times, big and small. This 80x60 diptych oil captures first light - just before golden hour, and last light at golden hour. I instinctively leaned towards golden hour for both paintings, but felt the colour palette of cool, crisp turquoise offset against orange light pinging from the metal legs created a beautiful contrast in the first canvas. The cooler shadows are painted in amethyst and blue. The roughly painted cables reflect the way we see objects like these from afar - slightly broken. In the second canvas a golden hour version of the same composition at dusk. In this painting I added lots of turquoise to the left of the tower and vibrant organgey reds to the legs and metalwork. The result is something that looks alive and three dimensional despite the looseness of the paint.

Sometimes it’s the anecdotal things that capture the eye, and the imagination. This graffiti was next to a freeway outside LA. The artist had taken the time to recreate a Gucci logo in a fairly gritty part of the city. That in itself was interesting. It looks like the same hand came back and scrawled “fuck Putin” at a later time. To make this, and a series of other paintings, I mounted Gucci shopping bags to 16 x 20 wood panels then applied oil, spray and house paints to create a conceptual contrast of premium elements in a less than luxurious setting. The Hockneyesque blue sky and palms makes this quintessential California.

Golden hour light is my favourite time of the day. A sense of new opportunities in the morning, or thinking about what tomorrow might bring in the evening. This factory was lit so beautifully while driving round LA that it was impossible to resist. Just a slither of light clipping the side of the building while the main motif was lit so warmly, the fading red glowed orange and pink. At 36 x 36, this oil painting draws upon my hero, Hockney, and of course the great Edward Hopper - a master at contrast and shadows. I only had seconds to capture this image as we blazed past at 70 mph, and the resulting painting feels like an ephemeral moment in time.

At first glance there’s an Instagram photo quality about the image of a knackered old strip mall, fading, broken signage in sharp contrast light. It’s painted with thick, highly textured oil on this 36 x 36 canvas that is actually quite loose. The paintwork has a cheap Neapolitan ice cream vibe which kind of makes the painting somehow edible… or maybe I’m just hungry.

There’s something about this scene that captures the imagination. Unwittingly, I painted this restaurant sign long before I realised what an iconic place The Taco Bravo is for denizens of Los Gatos and Campbell. The fourth painting, like the third, is a commission. And as with the sister painting, the admirer is a practitioner in advertising. My hunch is that this work follows the rhythm of a good poster or print ad - minimal, copy, enticing image, logo/brand bottom right. In this painting I built the background up over many layers and washes of oil - creating a sense of light and space. The background trees are a little lighter than the foreground ones - creating depth. As with the other Taco Bravos, the sign is thick with oil, giving it a solid, monolithic appearance. Housed in a white gallery floater frame, the work gives off a pop-art vibe wedded to expressionism.

The recipient of this version said, “so sunny, so California - with a touch of Taco Bravo weirdness. Right up my alley”. Couldn’t put it better myself.

SURF. 40 x 40 inches. Oil on canvas. The corner of this landmark shop is in the surf Mecca of Santa Cruz. As with most of my Americana work, this graphic composition looks realistic when viewing it in peripheral vision. The cobalt blue sky is as deep and real as pure California can get.

I returned to this view again after nearly two years to see what new ideas and a larger canvas would bring to this pretty view. In the original 24 x24 oil, I used thick strokes of oil to denote buildings - making a patchwork of semi-abstract candy-colours. Thiebauld was my biggest influence in the first painting, but in this one I adopted the more figurative approach of Richard Diebenkorn, a painter who I didn’t really know (but absolutely should have) before I moved to the Bay Area. In this larger 48 x 48 painting, I’ve used drips of oil to help define the verticals in the buildings. This looser technique appeals to my fondness for abstract work. As with many of my pieces, there’s a Hockney vibe to the colour palette.

Every trip to the city brings new riches. As I develop my style of painting, I’m influenced more and more by the work of Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud. Both painters were inspired by the West Coast and Bay Area - but depicted the subject in their own very unique ways. I’m being caught between the two artists - wanting the looseness of Diebenkorn, but with a little more realism. This is about my fourth cityscape of San Francisco, and as with the previous large format paintings, this 40 x30 is painted on a canvas primed with neutral grey. Doing this muddies the bolder colours a little and allows for the high-key whites (mixed with lead yellow white and beige) to provide a concrete a warm contrasty glow for the concrete in the roads and buildings. The foreground of the painting holds a little more form than the background made up of semi abstracts strokes. The painting when seen from about 15 or 20 feet looks realistic for a fleeting moment, like glancing down a long street through the passenger window in a car.

Lombard street is a destination I love returning to. I can honestly take or leave the windy road tourist-trap part of the street. It never ceases to amaze me how people will gaze in awe at the crazy-angled road rather than look around and breathe-in the astonishing views. I captured this in early January while the sun is low and the skies are crisp. Standing about half way down the windy part of Lombard Street, I caught the Bay Bridge in the background, but also made much more of the foreground - and the homes of the people who live here. As with the sister painting, the brushwork on this 48 x 48 canvas is very loose and thick with paint - contrasting light and dark. The whites are mixed with Indian yellow which provide a warm luminescence to the painting - bringing in the California spring on a cold winter day.

A row of San Francisco terrace houses caught in crisp early winter morning light. Structure is kept to simple geometric shapes filled with thick strokes of heavily textured paint.

As with most places in the Bay Area, power lines are an omnipresent and highly visible part of the architecture. I was tempted at first to paint this scene without them, thinking they feel like a blight on the environment. But the more you live here, the less you see them - and in fact, I rather feel they add to compositions as oppose to detract.

Stand back to around 10 feet from this 30 x 30 painting, and the composition pulls together to form a fairly photographic, ephemeral, view of urban life.

The light in San Francisco remains fairly consistent all year round, providing the sun is shining of course. I love my trips back to the city to collect reference as it all always feels the same as when I left it - candy colour houses, vivid greens and huge cerulean blue skies. I keep painting the views down the streets as they seem to go on for ever - straight lines with cool colours on the side in shadow, warm whites on the side in the sun. It’s only relatively recently dawned on me that the side in shadow is way brighter than really it should be. That’s because the light pings so vibrantly off the adjacent building that it almost artificially lights the side in shadow in this 40 x40 oil canvas.

When a friend invites you to go to San Francisco for an early morning stroll, you say yes. Especially if they are kind enough to drive you up the hills in search for arty vantage points, like this 36 x 36” view of Washington street from Alta Plaza Park. Thank you, Mr Norwood. Like so many San Francisco streets, they start steep, then vanish up into the heavens. So getting the perspective right while still keeping the work fairly loose and painterly is a challenge. To help dramatise the depth of field, the building closest to us is sharply painted but as the buildings go further back they become looser. At 3 feet by 3 feet it’s not a painting to really appreciate close up, or on an iPhone - but in person standing about fifteen feet away so all the shapes and smears become one.

I went for a Polaroid look with this little slice of Americana, painted on thick handmade 22 x 30” paper in oil and premium house paints. Flattening the detail and painting in bold contrasts to provide depth, the smooth Farrow & Ball house paint on the foreground is exactly the same bleached, flat tone of a California road in full summer sun. At a distance, there’s a photographic quality to the image, which belies the raw, impasto brushwork upon closer inspection. There’s non of my trademark California sky in this painting, but still a strong sense of heat and intense light.

A retro slice of gritty Americana found in Santa Monica. This garage’s typography caught my eye and I love how the font sits on rusted metals and muted blacks and greys. The 30 x 30 oil is painted on a neutral grey background which gives the bright colours a little more dirt. The lead-tin-yellow-white of the side of the building soaks up the powerful morning sunlight. The turquoise sky is muddied with greys and whites which represent the smog-filled LA air.