Six artists who share the studios and run the gallery

I lay a panel flat on the studio floor, pour thinned acrylic onto it and tilt it until the paint settles. I can steer the paint, but I cannot fully control where it goes.

The Estuary paintings started on walks along the river mouth at low tide, where fresh and salt water meet and leave lines in the mud. Each panel takes about two weeks to dry before I seal it with resin.

I paint the sea from the north pier, mostly in winter, when the water is grey and loud. I work with a palette knife in thick layers and finish each painting in the studio from small oil sketches.

Lately I have been painting the harbour walls too, the old plaster and the salt stains on them.

Most of my work is black and white. I build a surface with gesso, draw into it with ink, then scrape back and draw again. The large canvases take a month or more.

Since the spring I have been working in blue ink on paper, letting it run down a tilted board in layers.

I paint sheets of paper in a few colours, tear them and layer them on board until the picture holds together. Nothing is planned on paper first.

The Tide table series uses the colours of the harbour at different hours: slate, ochre, rope and the blue of the ferry.

I mix oil paint with cold wax so it dries matt and can be scraped. Each painting has twenty or thirty layers, and parts of the early layers come back through when I scrape.

The colours come from small notes I make in a notebook: a pink sky, a copper roof, a rusty railing.

I make flat stoneware panels to hang on the wall, and thrown vessels. The glaze is the picture. I mix my own glazes from local clay and ash and test each one on a tile before it goes near a panel.

Firing takes two days, and about one panel in five cracks in the kiln. Those go back into the clay bin.