colin halliday

It was a pleasure to visit the home of artist Colin Halliday last week, whose Derbyshire attic is stuffed full of beautiful landscapes. There is a barn too, which you walk to from his front door past the chickens and up some precarious wooden steps, to find more of the same: exquisite oils on canvas, the colours melting into one another, big bold skies and windswept hills.




Each painting was as glorious as the next and made choosing just five or six to bring back to the gallery really difficult. There is an energy to Colin's work which really takes your breath away.

"You should paint how you feel" he says. "That's where the soul and spirit is."

We talk about the way he uses his own energy, working quickly and instinctively with the paint.

"The purer the marks the more soulful the painting. If you try and control it it becomes contrived and looses its integrity. You need to just let it be"

Colin Halliday's work will feature in a new exhibition of landscape paintings to be held next month at thewhitegallery. Other artists include Dean Entwistle, Jenny Hirst, Emma King and Zelda Pickup.

The Art of Landscape (15-30 October) is part of the Bollington Walking Festival. For more information, please visit www.cheshirepeakdistrict.com